Author: Lilit Nahapetian

                                        Monday, 
Armenian Parliament Votes For Early Elections
Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian speaks during a session of the Armenian 
parliament, Yerevan, .
The Armenian parliament voted to dissolve itself on Monday, paving the way for 
the conduct of fresh elections in late June.
Armenia’s constitution stipulates that such elections can be held only if the 
prime minister resigns and the parliament twice fails to elect a new head of the 
government within two weeks. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and his cabinet 
formally stepped down for that purpose on April 25.
Deputies representing the parliament’s pro-government majority did not reelect 
him or install another premier when they first voted on May 3. They made sure 
that the second vote yields the same result.
This means that the National Assembly will be automatically dissolved. It will 
formally retain its legislative powers pending the election of a new parliament 
next month.
The two opposition parties represented in the outgoing legislature agreed to 
this scenario during talks with Pashinian held earlier this spring.
Pashinian first expressed readiness to hold early elections in December amid 
angry anti-government protests triggered by Armenia’s defeat in a six-week war 
with Azerbaijan. The Armenian opposition blamed him for the defeat and demanded 
that he hand over power to an interim government.
Pashinian and his My Step bloc stated on February 7 that they see no need for 
snap polls because of what they called a lack of “public demand.” A coalition of 
opposition parties resumed street protests in Yerevan on February 20.
Five days later, the Armenian military’s top brass issued a statement accusing 
Pashinian’s government of misrule and incompetence and demanding its 
resignation. The prime minister rejected the demand as a coup attempt. He went 
on to announce on March 18 that the snap polls will take place after all.
Pashinian Defends Track Record
        • Naira Nalbandian
Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian visits Gegharkunik province, May 9, 
2021.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian defended his track record on Monday, saying that 
his administration has achieved the key aim of the “velvet revolution” that 
brought him to power three years ago.
“I regard what I just said as our biggest achievement: the citizens of the 
Republic of Armenia feel that they are the masters of our country. At the end of 
the day, this is what the nonviolent, velvet, popular revolution of 2018 was 
done for and that goal has been achieved,” he said, speaking in the parliament.
Pashinian claimed to have carried out important “institutional reforms,” 
seriously reduced tax evasion and made “revolutionary changes” in the country’s 
prison system. He also insisted that the current Armenian government does not 
control the judiciary unlike the previous ones.
Pashinian described the autumn war in Nagorno-Karabakh as the “biggest problem” 
of his three-year tenure. He claimed that the war was already inevitable when he 
swept to power, implicitly accusing Armenia’s former leaders of mishandling the 
Karabakh peace process.
The 45-year-old former journalists similarly blamed former Presidents Serzh 
Sarkisian and Robert Kocharian for Azerbaijan’s victory in the six-week war when 
he addressed the National Assembly last month.
Sarkisian and Kocharian had led Karabakh during its successful 1991-1994 war 
with Azerbaijan. Like virtually all Armenian opposition leaders, the 
ex-presidents hold Pashinian responsible for the outcome of the second war 
stopped by a Russian-mediated truce accord last November.
Another former president, Levon Ter-Petrosian, charged last week that Pashinian 
and his political team have “failed in all areas.”
Pashinian scoffed at such claims. “We take many things for granted,” he said. 
“After that catastrophe [of November 2020] not a single gunshot has been fired 
in Armenia. Do you realize what this means? Could this have happened under a 
government that has failed in all areas of governance?”
The prime minister also said that unlike their predecessors he and other senior 
Armenian officials have not enriched themselves by sharing in the profits of 
lucrative businesses.
Taguhi Tovmasian, an independent lawmaker who left the ruling My Step bloc in 
November, countered that none of the country’s former rulers has been convicted 
or even accused of such corrupt practices under the current authorities.
“Who and how has benefited from whose business?” Tovmasian asked. “And how have 
they been punished in the post-revolution Armenia for the sake of restoring 
justice?”
Election Alliance Between Sarkisian, Ter-Petrosian Not Ruled Out
        • Astghik Bedevian
Armenia - Former President Serzh Sargsian addresses supporters outside a court 
in Yerevan, March 18, 2021
Political groups led by former Presidents Levon Ter-Petrosian and Serzh 
Sarkisian may still agree to join forces to participate in the upcoming 
parliamentary elections, a prominent opposition figure said on Monday.
Ter-Petrosian last week publicly called on Sarkisian and the other former 
Armenian president, Robert Kocharian, to lead a broad-based opposition alliance 
in an attempt to unseat Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.
Both men turned down the proposal before Ter-Petrosian suggested that the 
political parties led by him and Sarkisian set up an electoral bloc without 
Kocharian’s participation. Sarkisian did not accept that proposal either, saying 
through his office that “the bilateral alliance cannot be effective.”
The office made clear that Sarkisian’s Republican Party (HHK) will team up 
instead with the Fatherland party of Artur Vanetsian, a former head of Armenia’s 
National Security Service (NSS).
Ara Sahakian, a senior Fatherland member, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that 
the bloc might join forces Ter-Petrosian’s Armenian National Congress (HAK) 
party.
“I don’t exclude that new alliances or transformations will materialize,” he 
said. “Events are developing very rapidly and everything is possible.”
Sahakian, who had served as a deputy parliament speaker during Ter-Petrosian’s 
1991-1998 presidency, voiced strong support for the idea of an alliance of the 
three ex-presidents but cautioned that their relationships remain “very 
complicated.”
“We have always wanted them to be united, not divided, so that we and other 
political groups can rally around them. So it’s up to the three of them to 
decide,” he said.
In a statement released on Friday, Ter-Petrosian claimed that the creation such 
an alliance is the only way to oust “Pashinian’s criminal and nation-destroying 
regime.” He again said that none of the ex-president should aspire to the post 
of prime minister.
Speaking on Sunday, Kocharian insisted that he, Sarkisian and Ter-Petrosian can 
jointly “fight against these authorities” even without forming a single bloc.
Thousands Rally For Kocharian In Yerevan
        • Gayane Saribekian
Armenia - Former President Robert Kocharian addresses supporters demonstrating 
in Yerevan, May 9, 2021
Former President Robert Kocharian pledged to restore “dignified peace” and 
security in Armenia on Sunday as he rallied thousands of supporters in Yerevan 
after setting up an electoral alliance with two opposition parties.
Kocharian again blamed Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian for Armenia’s defeat in 
last year’s war in Nagorno-Karabakh and said Armenians will become a “nation of 
losers” if the latter holds on to power as a result of fresh parliamentary 
elections slated for next month.
Kocharian, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation and the newly established 
Resurgent Armenia party formally created the alliance called Armenia with a 
joint declaration signed in the presence of journalists. They effectively kicked 
off their election campaign at an ensuing rally held in Yerevan’s Liberty Square.
“We are now a country which cannot protect its borders and ensure the security 
of its population on its own,” Kocharian told the crowd that gathered there. “We 
have a government that has consistently weakened the army and is now doing 
nothing to rebuild it.”
“Our aim is to establish dignified peace. That cannot be done by a government 
that embodies defeat, disgrace, humiliation and deaths. But we can do that,” he 
said in a speech repeatedly interrupted by “Kocharian!” chants.
Kocharian said the Russian-brokered agreement that stopped the 
Armenian-Azerbaijani war in November also left Karabakh facing a “quite murky” 
future. He argued that the agreement allows Azerbaijan to demand in 2025 the 
withdrawal of Russian peacekeeping troops deployed in the Armenian-populated 
territory.
Armenia - Supporters of an electoral alliance led by former President Robert 
Kocharian rally in Yerevan, May 9, 2021.
“That infamous agreement of November 9 means that in four and a half years from 
now Azerbaijan can renounce the Russian peacekeeping troops,” he said. “Has any 
of you heard from the current rulers what they are doing in that direction? Are 
they prepared for such a scenario or not? A government symbolizing defeat cannot 
be an effective negotiator.”
The Karabakh-born ex-president went on to launch a scathing attack on Pashinian, 
portraying him as an incompetent and clueless leader. “In April 2018, our people 
brought to power someone who does not know what statehood is and how the state 
machine works and is managed,” he said.
Kocharian, 66, has been at loggerheads with Pashinian’s government ever since it 
took office in May 2018. He was first arrested in July 2018 on coup charges 
stemming from the 2008 post-election violence in Yerevan. He was twice freed and 
twice rearrested before Armenia’s Court of Appeals released him on bail in June 
2020.
A court of first instance threw out the coup charges, rejected by Kocharian as 
politically motivated, last month after the country’s Constitutional Court 
declared them unconstitutional.
The ex-president opposition allies are also highly critical of the current 
government. Dashnaktsutyun has been one of the main organizers of recent months’ 
opposition protests aimed at forcing Pashinian to resign. It was allied to 
Kocharian when he ruled the country from 1998-2008.
“This election is about having or not having a state,” Ishkhan Saghatelian, a 
Dashnaktsutyun leader, said after signing the joint declaration with Kocharian 
and Resurgent Armenia.
Armenia - Former President Robert Kocharian and leaders of the Dashnaktsutyun 
and Resurgent Armenia parties sign a joint declaration on their electoral 
alliance, Yerevan, May 9, 2021.
Resurgent Armenia was set up recently by local government officials and other 
well-known residents of southeastern Syunik province which has been facing 
serious security challengers as a result of the Karabakh war.
Kocharian said last month that the upcoming snap polls will be a two-horse race 
between Pashinian’s Civil Contract party and the political force led by him.
Speaking to journalists before Sunday’s rally, he defended his decision not to 
enter a more broad-based opposition alliance proposed by Levon Ter-Petrosian, 
another former president and his longtime foe.
Ter-Petrosian first floated the idea at a March 25 meeting with Kocharian and 
former President Serzh Sarkisian. The latter also turned it down.
Kocharian insisted that the three ex-presidents can work together in trying to 
unseat Pashinian even without forming a single political alliance. “The 
formation or non-formation of an alliance is just one of the techniques of that 
struggle,” he said.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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