In a short statement, it said Kocharian and the 12 members of the recently elected National Assembly representing Hayastan selected the 35-year-old Anna Grigorian for that role during a meeting in Yerevan. They also discussed their “forthcoming actions,” it said without elaborating.

Hayastan’s 28-strong faction in the previous parliament was led by former Defense Minister Seyran Ohanian. The latter did not run in the June 7 parliamentary elections but participated in some of the bloc’s campaign rallies.

Grigorian, who has a large following on social media, was third on the list of its election candidates topped by Kocharian. Like other senior Hayastan figures, she is a vocal critic of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, having regularly lambasted him on the parliament floor for the last five years. Pashinian lost his temper and threatened to jail opposition leaders after one such verbal attack in May 2025.

Hayastan finished third in last month’s elections with almost 10 percent of the vote, according to their official results rejected by it and other major opposition groups as fraudulent. Despite the vote-rigging allegations denied by Pashinian’s party, Kocharian’s bloc and billionaire Samvel Karapetian’s Strong Armenia alliance decided earlier this month to take up their parliament seats.

But as was the case after the previous elections held in 2021, Kocharian again ceded his seat to another Hayastan candidate.

—