‘People will voice their word in the event of political conspiracies’, Pashinyan says navigating towards early elections

15:06,

YEREVAN, OCTOBER 22, ARMENPRESS. Early elections of parliament must take place in Armenia, acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said in a live broadcast of Facebook. He expressed hope that political forces will not make any action contradicting this process.

“Tomorrow is the first deadline envisaged by law after my resignation, one more week is required to head for early elections. There is no other option of disbanding the parliament under the current Constitution. We either had to take the path of constitutional amendments and dissolve the parliament without my resignation, or we had to take the direction which we are on now. We decided not take the path of constitutional amendments. I felt that there would be comments alleging that I am clinging from office with both hands,” Pashinyan said.

Pashinyan stressed that all factions have announced they won’t nominate candidates for prime minister.

“A question arises whether conspiracies are possible during this period. Theoretically conspiracies can happen. If this happens, then the people must voice their word. I will address the people in the same way, I will call on them to gather and speak their voice. Therefore – follow the developments. Let’s be in constant contact in order to rapidly respond about issues and make decisions together. One thing is clear – we must go for early [elections], and I hope that the political forces won’t do actions contradicting it,” he said.

The first round of electing a prime minister will be held October 24, eight days after Nikol Pashinyan announced his resignation in a technical maneuver to trigger the dissolution of the incumbent parliament.

Under the law, parliamentary factions have seven days after the resignation to nominate a candidate.

The election takes place during a special session, but since the parliament will be holding regular sessions next week, the October 24 first round of election will take place within the framework of the ordinary sitting.

All factions have agreed that they won’t nominate candidates.

In an earlier statement, Pashinyan had said that his candidacy might be nominated in the first round as a formality in a pre-arranged scenario of not being elected.

Under the constitution, the parliament gets disbanded in the event of failing to elect a prime minister twice.

A second round of election takes place seven days after the first one.

Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan