May 7 2018
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.”