Armenia’s Revolution Will Not be Monopolized

Maxim Edwards

 

MASIS, Armenia — “Who will we vote for? Nikol Pashinyan, of course!” said Karen Karapetyan and Aghavni Tovmasyan, incredulous. This couple in their thirties arrived at a polling station here last Sunday to vote in snap parliamentary elections. Their candidate won by a landslide: Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party took 70.5 percent of the vote. “Mighty, mighty, mighty people!” wrote Pashinyan on his Facebook page the morning after the results. “I love you all, I’m proud of you, I bow before you.”
Pashinyan was swept to power on a platform of combating corruption, widespread poverty, and unemployment. All those problems are on show in this town of 18,000 in the shadow of Mount Ararat. Locals in Masis work in agriculture or two large tobacco factories; most of the town’s industry was shuttered after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The Armenian Velvet Revolution is over: Pashinian voted in as prime minister

Monica Ellena

 

The honking started early. Around Grigor Lusavorich (“The Illuminator”) Church, vehicles of all shapes and ages set out hours before Armenia’s National Assembly was due to convene to appoint the country’s new prime minister. Ancient Soviet Ladas and shiny SUVs alike were driven down the central Tigran Mets, all flapping the Armenian orange-blue-red flag, and all beeping, hard. It was the summons to the square.

Not that people needed it. After weeks of protests that have transformed Armenia’s politics from a sluggish Soviet Lada to a speedy Lamborghini in a matter of three weeks, Republic Square has become the pulsing heart of a whole country called to wake up from its lethargic post-Soviet stillness.

He Was a Protester. Now, Nikol Pashinyan Is Armenia’s Prime Minister

Neil MacFarquhar

 

Nikol Pashinyan, who led the nonviolent protest movement that improbably toppled the government of Armenia, had just ended a brief interview and headed into another room when he whirled around.

“Would you like to eat?” he asked, beckoning to a table scattered with plastic cartons holding takeout pork kebabs wrapped in paperlike bread, as well as tomato and cucumber salad. “This kind of lunch is the usual for us for the past month; we have not gotten back to civilized ways.”

If whirlwind events of the past month are any guide, Armenia might never get back to its old ways, civilized or not. On Tuesday, Mr. Pashinyan became Armenia’s interim prime minister, when a Parliament dominated by his political foes elected him by a 59-to-42 vote.

After vowing to remake the country’s political and economic systems, Mr. Pashinyan told a cheering throng in the central Republic Square in Yerevan, the capital, that, “Your victory is not that I was elected as prime minister of Armenia; your victory is that you decided who should be prime minister of Armenia.”

A revolution of values: freedom, responsibility and courage in Armenia's Velvet Revolution

Armine Ishkanian

 

In 1978. Vaclav Havel wrote The Power of the Powerless, in which he argued against the communist regime, maintaining that it forced people to “live in a lie”. For Havel, the resistance against the lie was to begin living in the truth and to challenge one’s own powerlessness through recognising one’s agency. Fast forward 40 years, and we are now witnessing a new velvet revolution in post-socialist Armenia, a country which proclaimed its independence from Soviet rule in 1991, but which has long struggled to create a democracy. More than anything else, this is a revolution about values. It is about the values of Armenian society and its domestic, socio-economic and political realities. The revolution is not about geopolitics or foreign relations.

Democracy Is Held Back in Armenia

Viken Berberian

 

On Tuesday, electoral arithmetic defeated democratic sentiment in Armenia after the Republican Party of Armenia, the majority party, used its numerical strength to back a discredited government and block the election of the opposition leader Nikol Pashinyan as the new prime minister.

A chorus of defiant honks expressing the collective angst filled the streets of Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, as the disappointing result became public. Tens of thousands of people had been singing and chanting outside the parliament throughout the day in support of Mr. Pashinyan’s election.

Mr. Pashinyan, a former crusading journalist and opposition leader, had led the massive protests against the government in April, which culminated in the resignation of the former president and prime minister, Serzh Sargsyan.

The opposition leader has called upon his supporters to continue civil disobedience and block roads, railways and airports.

National Assembly Fails to Elect Prime Minister in Armenia; General Strike Ahead

With hundreds of thousands of people gathered at Republic Square beginning early morning hours on Tuesday, Armenia’s National Assembly convened an extraordinary session at noon to elect a new prime minister, for which opposition leader Nikol Pashinyan was the only candidate who after a dramatic almost 10-hour session did not receive the majority of votes to occupy that position.

In the end, with businessman Gagik Tsarukian’s alliance’s 29 votes, the Yelk factions nine votes and six votes from the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, Pashinyan received only 45 of the 53 votes needed to secure the prime ministership. The Republican Party of Armenia announced that its lawmakers would not support his candidacy. Only one Republican member, Feliks Tsolakyan, broke ranks with his party and voted for him.

Two members of the Tsarukian alliance did not attend the parliament session, with one Republican Party of Armenia member, Grigor Avalyan, announcing his resignation from parliament ahead of Tuesday’s session.

The National Assembly has seven days to convene another vote, which by all estimation will take place on Tuesday. If on that day the legislature fails to elect a prime minister, the parliament would have to organize snap parliamentary elections, under the Republican Party of Armenia’s leadership.

A real revolution? Protest leader Armen Grigoryan on what’s happening in Armenia

Karena Avedissian

 

In the past two weeks, Armenia’s protest movement has achieved remarkable successes. From forcing the resignation of the country’s leader for the last ten years, to escalating demands to remove the ruling Republican Party from Parliament, this mobilisation has been able to be as ambitious as it has been because of the broad support it has across the country’s regions and classes.

Armen Grigoryan, who currently works at Transparency International Armenia, has participated in various political movements in Armenia over the past five years. He was campaign manager for Andrias Ghukasyan’s 2013 presidential campaign. In 2015, Grigoryan ran the No Pasaran campaign against the proposed constitutional reforms that would eventually turn Armenia into a parliamentary republic.

This is a two part interview. The first part was taken on 21 April, two days before Serzh Sargsyan’s resignation. At the end of the interview, Armen was arrested on criminal charges of “inciting mass unrest”. He was released after Sargsyan’s resignation.

Did the Armenian People Win the Battle or the War?

The Zoryan Institute

 

Today April 29, the people of Armenia won!
The three parliamentary parties agreed to support the “people’s choice,” Nikol Pashinyan, for prime minister. The fourth, the ruling party, has promised not to object to it.
“Nikol Pashinyan was right. I was mistaken,” Armenian Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan said after leaving his post on the fifth day of an unprecedented popular protest against his regime, lead by Nikol Pashinyan.
Sargsyan added, “The movement in the streets is against my tenure. I am fulfilling your demand. I wish our country peace, harmony and common sense.”
“We are in Euphoria. We took down a powerful man,” said one of the protestors. He then added, “We are back in charge of our self-rule and have regained our national pride and integrity.”
But this is bittersweet. What was won? A battle or the war?

Armenia rejects the ‘politics of eternity’

Chase Johnson

 

Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, three countries in the South Caucasus once ruled by the former Soviet Union, still operate in the shadow of what is now called Russia.

The three states are located between Iran and Turkey on the western side and Russia to the north. What happens in them affects Russian interests in the region.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, over the last 18 years, has maintained strong political, military and economic relations – sometimes welcome, sometimes not – with these countries and their leaders in an attempt to keep them on Russia’s side. Russia’s intervention in Syria’s civil war and its growing alliances with Iran and Turkey makes maintaining influence over the South Caucasus states even more enticing for Putin. He wants to be the guy in charge.

Armenia’s “permanent revolution”: why do the protests continue in Yerevan?

Mikayel Zolyan

 

On the evening of 23 April, Armenia celebrated the resignation of Serzh Sargsyan, the man who had ruled Armenia for ten years as president — and for a week as prime-minister. Strangers hugged and congratulated one another, cars honked their horns, and shops ran out of champagne. Everybody celebrated in their own way: some put tables in the streets and marked the occasion traditionally, with vodka and a barbecue, while others danced to Berlin-style techno music in bars. Still, the happiness seemed universal.

Today, on 25 April, the protesters are back on the streets. As one of the protesters said to Radio Liberty correspondent on the station’s live feed: “We have overthrown the tsar, now we need to overthrow tsarism.” Formally, the protests have a new target — acting prime-minister Karen Karapetyan, who represents the (still) ruling Republican Party, which at least at the time of writing, possessed the majority in Armenia’s parliament.

Sometimes Armenian Protests Are Just Armenian Protests

Thomas de Waal

 

When a leader is deposed by street protests in any Russia-allied post-Soviet country, analysts from Washington to Moscow jump to geopolitical conclusions faster than you can say “George Soros.” But sometimes, as in Armenia these past several days, government-toppling protests are just government-toppling protests.

On April 23, Serzh Sargsyan resigned as Armenia’s prime minister under pressure from mass civil unrest, led mainly by young people, in the capital, Yerevan. The streets of the city turned into an exhilarating carnival of people power that surprised most Armenians.

Moscow Reacts to Resignation of Armenian PM Sargsyan

Armenian Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan resigned on Monday after days of anti-government protests in the capital Yerevan and other cities.

Sargsyan, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, had served as Armenia's president for a decade until earlier this month and had faced accusations of clinging to power when parliament voted for him to take up the post of prime minister.