In response to yesterday’s stinging attack by President Serzh Sargsyan against his person and political capabilities, Gagik Tsarukyan upped the stakes a bit more by publicly calling for regime change via snap presidential elections.

The entire scenario ignited some two weeks ago when a Prosperous Armenia Part (BHK) party activist was seized off a Yerevan street, pushed into a waiting car, and later beaten quite severely.

The BHK (Armenia’s second largest political party headed by Tsarukyan) laid the full responsibility of the attack on the ruling Armenian Republican Party (HHK) government.

This, in turn, lead to threats from the top echelons of the HHK to the BHK that such accusations should be dropped or the consequences would be dire.

Those consequences were stated yesterday in a speech by President Sargsyan before senior members of the HHK.

Sargsyan personally derided Tsarukyan as an unfit political leader, threatened to kick him out of parliament and ordered tax audits of his multi-million dollar business empire.

In a statement today at a meeting of BHK parliamentary faction members and party officials, Tsarukyan called on the people of Armenia “to prepare for struggle”.

“When 3,000 people come out into the streets, they are forced to modify the law. When all the people fill the streets, the regime will change. I am now calling for a national mobilization with just one goal in mind – using all legal means (round the clock rallies, marches, and demonstrations, civil disobedience) to force Serzh Sargsyan to leave office and thus rid the country of this menace.”

The use of the word “menace” by Tsarukyan in describing Sargsyan is a direct comeback to the president’s remarks yesterday labeling the BHK leader as “a menace for our country”.

Tsarukyan declared that the regime must leave forthwith and that Armenia needed to clean itself of the suffocating environment in which it finds itself.

“Today, I regard the most important work of my life to be liberating Armenia from this regime of evil,” Tsarukyan concluded.

Tsarukyan also remarked that he will be meeting with representatives of the opposition Armenian National Congress and the Heritage Party for talks later today.