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Zartonk 03.05.2018.pdf
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The man who led unprecedented street protests that toppled Armenia’s prime minister last month said he expected to take power in a matter of days after being rebuffed by parliament last week.
Opposition leader Nikol Pashinyan, who drew vast crowds in the capital, Yerevan, forcing Serzh Sargsyan to resign, told the Financial Times he expected ruling party MPs to elect him as prime minister in a vote on Tuesday.
“Anything is possible, because the political situation is volatile. But we will win anyway,” Mr Pashinyan said in an interview.
A former journalist who leads an opposition faction of just three MPs, Mr Pashinyan masterminded a large protest campaign against Mr Sargsyan, who was president for a decade before he changed Armenia to a parliamentary republic.
Mr Sargsyan assumed the premiership after serving the maximum number of presidential terms but abruptly stepped down last month after Mr Pashinyan drew crowds of more than 150,000 to Yerevan’s Republic Square for several weeks.
Mr Pashinyan has shot from near-obscurity to become the most popular figure in Armenia, a Caucasus state of 3m that became independent from the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. His broadcasts on Facebook Live draw audiences of as much as 800,000 — about a quarter of Armenia’s population.
“The Armenian government was pressing the people continuously. It was like a spring — it opened very quickly,” Mr Pashinyan said.
Last week MPs from Mr Sargsyan’s Republican party, which still has a majority in parliament, voted down Mr Pashinyan’s first attempt to become prime minister in a marathon session that saw them make hints in favour of Russian intervention. Moscow, which normally views mass protests in neighbouring countries as a direct threat, has been unusually restrained and says the political crisis is a domestic Armenian issue.
Mr Pashinyan responded by asking followers, who packed the square and surrounding cafés to watch the hearing, to shut down critical infrastructure including main roads and Yerevan’s airport. After the show of force Republicans agreed to back his candidacy.
“The best way for them is to elect me and hope I will fail,” Mr Pashinyan said. “There are no negotiations. They just said they would vote for me.”
Mr Pashinyan, who is trying to turn his command of the street into a mandate for governing, said he was working on a programme that parliament would have a week to consider if he became prime minister.
He said his priorities would be to break up oligarchic domination of commodity imports and to eradicate corruption “very quickly”.
Mr Pashinyan also said he intended to leave Armenia’s pro-Russian foreign policy unchanged. Armenia is a member of Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union and its collective security bloc, while Russian troops have a base in Gyumri, Armenia’s second-largest city, and help guard its border with Turkey.
A further goal is to change the electoral code, which he says unfairly favours the Republicans, and hold early parliamentary elections. Nonetheless, “even with the current code, we will win,” Mr Pashinyan said. “If not May 8, then after a week or a month.”
Analysts have compared the early euphoria over Mr Pashinyan’s movement to revolutions in neighbouring Georgia, Ukraine, and even Egypt, all of which went sour after heady beginnings.
“There is no comparison because we have no geopolitical context,” Mr Pashiyan said. “This is about the renaissance of the people.”
That silence stimulated rather than tempered fierce debates on this turmoil in Russian social media networks. Putin pays scant attention to these sources, but his briefings tell him mostly what he wants to hear, and this tightly managed information flow possibly reinforced the self-deception in the proverbial Kremlin corridors that nothing of import was happening. Sargsyan’s resignation on April 23 came, therefore, as a shock, and while the propaganda machine scrambled to explain it away, Putin was—not for the first time during his long reign—paralyzed into inaction. In the crucial two weeks when opposition leader Nikol Pashinyan advanced his claim for the position of prime minister, Moscow remained indifferent and uncharacteristically aloof, which will definitely have serious repercussions not only for the Russian-Armenian relations, but also for Russia’s profile in the international arena.
The dominant discourse in Russia on the subject of revolutions has been strongly negative, in contrast with the Soviet glorification of this phenomenon as an “engine of progress.” The proposition that a forceful overthrow of legitimate order brings only chaos and violence is accepted as a political axiom, while discussions on such politically incorrect issues as the “right for rebellion” are reduced to the margins of blogosphere. This fierce condemnation goes beyond the rational stance of an authoritarian regime, which firmly controls the elections and finds street protests a threat to its existence. Vladimir Putin tends to take this issue personally, still feeling the old profound shock from watching helplessly as angry crowds marched by the Dresden KGB headquarters back in November 1989 and, more recently, reflecting on the horrible end of Muammar Gadhafi.
What makes this natural rejectionism particularly aggressive is the assertion that the so-called “color revolutions” in Russia’s neighborhood—as well as the hopeful Arab Spring in the Middle East—were instigated and manipulated by the United States and the European Union. The elevation of conspiracy theories to the level of state policy makes Russia’s opposition to various attempts at forceful “regime change” a part of its fast-evolving confrontation with the West. In portraying himself as a champion of counter-revolution, Putin claims leadership in the global resistance against the U.S. policy of preserving its eroding “hegemony.” The “color revolutions” were even defined as a new form of warfare, despite scant enthusiasm among the top brass for elaborating on this theoretical innovation.
Moscow’s lack of response to the explosion of street protests in Yerevan goes strikingly against this ideological counter-revolutionary stance. For sure, there were no anti-Russian or pro-EU slogans in the peaceful rallies across Armenia, and Pashinyan asserted that the alliance with Russia would remain strong—this allowed opinion-influencers in Moscow to venture that the unfolding crisis was different from “color revolutions.” In the previous series of street protests in summer 2015, friendship with Russia was also never questioned, but it didn’t stop Moscow from inventing Western interference. Explaining the new Russian passivity is hard to find, but Syria may well be a part of it.
Many intentions and ambitions determined Putin’s risky decision to launch a military intervention into the Syrian civil war in September 2015, and a prominent one among them was the perceived need to stop and push back the wave of revolutions. The explosion of social anger in the Arab world and the uprising in Ukraine were caused by vastly different drivers, but from Moscow’s perspective, the Tahrir and the Maidan were parts of the same Western conspiracy. By early 2018, however, the Arab Spring retreated, leaving behind two collapsed states (Libya and Yemen), two forcefully suppressed upheavals (Bahrain and Egypt), and only one success story (Tunisia), while the Ukrainian breakthrough degenerated into political squabbles in Kiev and military deadlock in Donbass. Syria is no longer a key battlefield in the struggle against revolutions, but just a permanently mutating violent disaster. Putin declared “victory” in the war against the rebels of various persuasions, only to find Russian forces entrapped in new spasms of fighting.
Moscow is stuck with an ostracized dictator who can only sustain his grasp on power with large-scale military support from Russia and Iran, but this “brotherhood-in-arms” involves all sorts of troubles. The Russian forces stay clear from the escalating conflict between Iran and Israel in Syria, as well as from the fighting between the Turkish army and the Kurdish forces, while trying to preserve the “de-conflicting” mode with U.S. forces. This complicated maneuvering means that Putin’s order to reduce Russian forces cannot be executed, because without a good many boots on the ground, Russia cannot influence the new post-ISIS phase of the Syrian war and cannot ensure security of its two bases (Khmeimin and Tartus). This imperative to sustain the intervention signifies a protracted stress for the Russian navy and air-space forces—and undercuts the ability to launch new military interventions.
At the moment when politics were heating up in Armenia, Russia’s Syrian engagement was not only demanding more resources from Moscow (for instance, for rebuilding the Syrian air defense system), but was also demanding attention to the fast-transforming crisis. Meanwhile, there were escalating tensions in U.S.-Russia relations after the U.S. Treasury enforced new heavy-hitting sanctions, which compelled some mainstream Moscow experts to question whether the Trump administration really aimed at undermining the elite support for Putin’s regime. The need to monitor the developments on the Korean peninsula, where Russia’s exposure is high but the impact is low, was another source of stress, so the system of political decisionmaking in Moscow faced significant overload, which inevitably results in miscalculations and procrastinations.
Russia’s political system is centralized to the extreme—and that the attention span of the “decider” is inevitably limited.
The proposition that the non-response to the crisis in Armenia was a mistake might appear far-fetched, but it rests on the fact that Russia’s political system is centralized to the extreme—and that the attention span of the “decider” is inevitably limited. Since the start of the Ukraine crisis in early 2014, Putin has shown little interest in the conflict transformations in the Caucasus, and never developed a particular chemistry with Sargsyan. The quick end to the escalation of fighting in Nagorno Karabakh in April 2016 was taken as proof positive of Russia’s capacity for controlling the status quo. The Kremlin administration was also quite preoccupied with ensuring that no undesirable disturbance would upset Putin’s presidential inauguration on May 7. It is quite possible that Putin’s aids dismissed Pashinyan’s Gandhi-style march across Armenia in early April as a mere theater by a marginal trouble-maker.
While a military intervention was certainly out of the question, Moscow has mastered the application of a wide range of hybrid means that could have been effectively deployed in support of the friendly dictator-in-distress in Yerevan. But Moscow missed the right moment for such indirect power projection, and even Pashinyan’s high-impact posts on Facebook were not attacked by the infamous Russian troll factories. Corruption, which is the main irritant for Armenians, has produced many profitable links between Moscow and Yerevan that are ideally suited for manipulating elites and crowds; yet, they remained idle. That Sargsyan made the hard decision to say “I was wrong,” rather than ask Moscow for emergency support, is testament to the strength of a very particular war-forged Armenian political culture that remains profoundly incomprehensible for the Kremlin. His astounding resignation could have triggered an over-reaction from Russia, but Putin couldn’t find a counterpart to connect with and wasn’t inclined to grace the intrigues of the beleaguered Republican party with his attention.
Russia’s ability to provide security guarantees to post-Soviet autocrats is seriously compromised.
In hindsight, a wise analyst might suggest that if Moscow had attempted a hybrid intervention in the Armenian crisis and failed, the damage to its international positions would have been significantly greater. The chances for forcefully suppressing the protests at their early stages were, however, as good as in Moscow, where peaceful rallies on May 5 were brutally dispersed, so the Kremlin’s rather unconvincing pose of “non-interference in internal affairs” is dubious. It is possible that the unsatisfactory experiences from Syria informed Moscow’s self-restraint, as resources for proactive foreign policy moves are now assessed with greater care. The Occam’s razor explanation, however, leaves an observer with the notion that Putin and his court made the mistake of ignoring the beginning of the explosive crisis—but avoided the more serious blunder of attempting a belated intervention. Russia’s ability to provide security guarantees to post-Soviet autocrats is seriously compromised, but a reproduction in Moscow of a joyful triumph of street democracy in Yerevan remains rather improbable.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2018/05/07/what-explains-russias-uncharacteristic-indifference-to-the-revolution-in-armenia/
May 07, 21:20 UTC+3 YEREVAN
YEREVAN, May 7./TASS/. Armenia needs social and political reforms, president’s adviser Tevan Poghosyan told TASS on Monday.
“We must all change and realize that if we have become a country which has the supremacy of the statute law, a lot depends on our actions,” Poghosyan said, urging the society and political forces to work towards reforming the country.
Poghosyan was appointed adviser to President Armen Sarkissian on May 4. In 2012, politically uncommitted Tevan Poghosyan was elected to the country’s parliament from the opposition Heritage Party, having a parliamentary seat until 2017.
Mass opposition rallies broke out in Armenia on April 13. Ten days later on April 23, Armenia’s then-newly appointed Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan resigned amid the ongoing unrest. Deputy Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan was appointed as Acting Prime Minister. Two days later, the ruling parliamentary coalition collapsed following the exit of the Dashnaktsutyun party.
On May 1, Armenia’s parliament rejected opposition leader Nikol Pashinyan’s bid to become prime minister. Pashinyan was backed by 45 lawmakers, but failed to obtain the 53 seats he needed to have a majority. After that, he called on his supporters to continue large-scale civil disobedience actions.
As mass protests wracked Armenia last month, 23-year-old Arman Arutyunian laid down his law school books in Vienna and returned to his homeland, sensing that the country was at a watershed.
Now, as the leader of those protests is expected to become prime minister on Tuesday, Arutyunian believes that political changes in the poverty-ridden former Soviet republic could bring back many other Armenians who fled to seek their fortunes abroad.
“Life and hope returned to Armenia. We finally saw some prospects and believed that the hopeless situation in the country can change,” he said.
About 900,000 people who were born in Armenia, a country of 3 million, currently live abroad, according to the U.N. Population Fund. More than 10 percent of the population left the country during the decade — 2008 to 2018 — that Serzh Sargsyan was in power as president. Of those who remained, nearly 12 percent live in dire poverty on less than 1530 drams ($3.20) a day. The nation’s official unemployment rate is 16 percent.
Even some Armenians whose families have not lived here for many generations feel involved in Armenia’s political transformation.
Rebecca Topakian, from an Armenian diaspora community established in France in the early 20th century, says the current changes may persuade her to stay longer in the nation that her grandparents left.
“I thought well, I’m coming to a country everyone leaves … and now the fact that things are changing makes me want to take part in a country building its politics and independence,” said Topakian, who is working on an art project about her family’s roots.
Armenians widely blamed Sargsyan and his ruling Republican Party for keeping the country as the Caucasus region’s poorest through corruption and incompetence. So when he attempted to get around term limits and remain in power, longstanding frustrations boiled over into protests of up to 100,000 that gripped the capital, Yerevan, for weeks.
Sargsyan had stepped down from the presidency because of term limits but then was appointed by the parliament as prime minister — just as the government’s structure had shifted to give the prime minister more power than the president.
Even before Sargsyan was named prime minister, opposition lawmaker Nikol Pashinian was spearheading protests against the move that was widely seen as a Sargsyan power grab. Faced with the raucous but largely peaceful protests, Sargsyan resigned six days after his appointment.
Opposition untested
On Tuesday, parliament is selecting a new prime minister and, under a concession made by the Republicans, Pashinian appears certain to be chosen. That would bring into power a man who has offered considerable charisma but no detailed program for how to turn Armenia around.
“We’re seeing rising expectations, especially among the youth. But the opposition doesn’t have a strategy for developing the country, no plan for modernization. The big question is how the opposition can use and institutionalize the credit of trust that it has received,” said Alexander Iskandrian, an analyst at the Caucasus Institute in Yerevan.
For now, many of Armenia’s young people are caught between high spirits about the changes wrought by their protests — which were often marked by singing and dancing — and concerns over the challenges ahead.
“Our protest will have a point only in the event that the new ruling elite propose a new scenario to the country and will be able to realize it,” said Toros Khachaturian, a 19-year-old film student.
Karina Eritian, who has an economics degree, ended up taking a job as a supermarket cashier after being unable to find work in her profession, earning 120,000 dram ($250) a month. She is eager for improvements to come, but knows it will take time.
“We very much want changes, but something can hardly change in a month. We are ready to be patient,” the 22-year-old said.
Arutyunian, the law student, is optimistic enough that he doesn’t plan to return to Vienna, despite the potential prestige of having a Western diploma. Still, he understands that uncertainty abounds.
“Armenia got a chance, which can easily be lost if there won’t be structural changes,” he said. “We have made the first step toward change, but now are frozen in expectation of what is next.”
This new spot specializes in a variety of traditional Armenian dishes like beef and chicken khorovats (kebabs), pork and lamb chops, basturma seasoned and air-dried raw beef, and more. Head on over to check it out: Ginetun Pandok is open from 11 a.m.-11 p.m. daily. Inna K., who was among the first Yelpers to the new spot on March 15, said, “Great place. Really loved it, very clean, beautiful, and lovely atmosphere. Service is friendly. Good menu, with a huge choice of different food. Very delicious. For sure go back again and again.” The situation at the Line of Contact between Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh Republic) and Azerbaijan is relatively stable, Artsakh Defense Minister Levon Mnatsakanyan told ArtsakhPress, adding that the military equipment, brought by the adversary, is in their concentration zones, and the Artsakh Defense Army carefully follows their movements. “We can assess the situation in the frontline as relatively stable. As of May 6, there have been ceasefire violations only from firearms”, the minister said, as quoted by the source. He noted that the Armenian Armed Forces vigilantly conduct their service in the border. The agency reminds that in recent days the Artsakh Defense Army was regularly releasing footages on intensive accumulations of military equipment and manpower of the adversary across the border. Armenian parliament has a mission stabilizing the situation which is especially important in this period, As the press department the National Assembly reported, Saghatelyan said that in the preparatory phase the specialized approach and the professionalism have created precondition the ceremony to enjoy high evaluation by the political leadership of the country, as well as by the international structures and guests. In Saghatelyan’s words, the National Assembly staff is a body implementing professional activity irrespective of political forces and is obliged to continue being one of the most disciplined, the most organized and the most effective bodies in our country irrespective of political circumstances. Thanking the employees for the works done and being done, Chief of Staff-Secretary General of the parliament added that the Staff of the National Assembly, being a nonpolitical body, should carry on providing equal conditions for all political forces represented in the National Assembly.
The Seismic Protection Survey Seismological Network of Armenia’s Ministry of Emergency Situations registered a 4.1-magnitude earthquake at northern latitude 39.810° and eastern longitude 43.170° geographic coordinates – 18km north-east off the Turkish city of Agri – at the depth of 10 km. The quake struck the Turkish city at 10:18 p.m. Yerevan time on Sunday, May 6, the ministry told Panorama.am. The tremor measured magnitude 5-6 points at the epicenter which was some 80-85 km away from the state border of Armenia. The jolts were also felt in Yerevan, Armenia’s capital, with magnitude 2-3.
May 8 — The Judgment Day for Armenia?
IndraStra
May 7 2018
May 8 — The Judgment Day for Armenia?
Monday,
By IndraStra Global News Team
After weeks of mass street protests, arrests and the resignation of the prime minister — Serzh Sargsyan, Armenia’s on the brink of ushering in a new leader.
The political optics of Sargsyan taking advantage of constitutional changes to move from his position as president to a new, more powerful role as prime minister sparked 11 days of street protests that ended up pushing Sargsyan to resign. Moscow, which normally views mass protests in neighboring countries as a direct threat, has been unusually restrained and says the political crisis is a domestic Armenian issue.
Though Armenia spent two decades after the breakup of the Soviet Union on a westward path, Sargsyan, a Republican, secured closer trade and political ties to Moscow. Do note, the members of Republican Party of Armenia (Hayastani Hanrapetakan Kusaktsutyun, HHK) have dominated Armenian politics since 1999. Also, Sargsyan has been in power either as President or Prime Minister since March 2007. He even amended the country’s constitution to remove a clause that would limit the number of terms he could be in power.
He allowed Russia to extend its military presence in Armenia and joined Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). However, not so long ago, Nikol Pashinyan, a leader of the Armenian protests (who became the sole candidate after the deadline passed without any others registering), stated that Armenia’s membership in Russia-led EEU poses a threat to the national security of the country. But, again, it’s not guaranteed Pashinyan will become prime minister.
As it was expected, the National Assembly (Azgayin Zhoghov) sought to halt his bid. The voting was conducted on May 1 and Pashinyan was to be elected as Prime Minister. He needed 53 votes, which included six votes from the HHK. But the ruling party voted overwhelmingly against Pashinyan’s candidacy, even though he was the only candidate to be in the field.
This led to a large protest on May 2 where highways and streets were blocked across the nation, with laborers striking work. At Republic Square in Yerevan, the country’s capital, around 150,000 people gathered to listen to Pashinyan speak. Another round of voting was announced and it will be held on May 8, i.e., tomorrow.
Last week, Vahram Baghdasaryan, the head of the HHK in parliament, told Reuters that his party would support anyone on May 8, including Pashinyan, if they enjoyed the backing of one-third of lawmakers. Pashinyan, in his Republic Square address, said that he had been informed of the ruling party’s support for his candidacy for the May 8 vote.
Baghdasaryan’s announcement also came minutes after opposition parties announced that Pashinyan had secured the support of the minimum 35 lawmakers needed to be nominated as a candidate in the May 8 vote.
The Tsarukian Alliance (Bargavatch Hayastan kusaktsut’yun, BHK), with 31 seats in parliament, announced that it would support Pashinyan’s nomination. Together with Pashinyan’s Yelk (“Way Out”) faction, which has nine seats, that gives him support from more than one-third of the legislature.
However, as per Armenia’s constitution, if a prime minister is not elected in the second vote on May 8, parliament will be dissolved and early general elections would be held with the HHK-led acting government in charge of the electoral process.
With reporting by Aljazeera, BBC, RFE/RL, The Hindu, and Reuters
Glendale gets a new Armenian restaurant: Ginetun Pandok
KABC-TV
May 7 2018
A new bar and Armenian spot has opened for business in the neighborhood. Called Ginetun Pandok, the new arrival is located at 333 N. Verdugo Rd. in Glendale.
Yelper Nana M. added, “I ordered food for to go, it was fast, good customer service, delicious food, it was really good. I definitely will go back there again.”
http://abc7.com/food/glendale-gets-a-new-armenian-restaurant-ginetun-pandok/3439736/
The fresh addition has gotten an enthusiastic response thus far, with a 4.5-star rating out of three reviews on Yelp.
Artsakh defense minister: Situation at Artsakh-Azerbaijan Line of Contact relatively stable
Panorama, Armenia
May 7 2018
Parliament obliged to be the most organized and effective body irrespective of political circumstances – Ara Saghatelyan
Panorama, Armenia
May 7 2018
the Chief of Staff-Secretary General of the RA National Assembly (NA) Ara Saghatelyan stated today. Saghatelyan’s remarks came at a ceremony where employees of the state system were awarded the RA NA Speaker’s Letters of Acknowledgement for showing practical participation in the preparatory works of the special NA sitting dedicated to assuming the office of the President of the Republic and fulfilling their office obligations with high efficiency.
Magnitude 4 quake strikes Turkey; felt in Armenia
Panorama, Armenia
May 7 2018