The Sunday Times (London), UK
December 9, 2018 Sunday
Leader of Velvet Revolution is favourite to win Armenian poll
by Louise Callaghan, Yerevan
In a bustling wine bar in Yerevan, a group of young Armenians clinked their glasses in celebration. All through the capital of this once-dreary Soviet backwater, bars and restaurants were filling up.
"It was too exciting not to be here," said Aimee Keushguerian, 25, who moved here from Tuscany two years ago to run a wine company with her father.
Like her friends, she is a repatriate – an ethnic Armenian raised in the diaspora, who has come to Yerevan to be part of the extraordinary wave of change coursing through this tiny piece of the former USSR.
Still scarred by memories of historical atrocities, war with neighbouring Azerbaijan and crippling economic problems, Armenia is holding what is being billed as its first free and fair election today.
The vote follows street protests in April that swept away the post-Soviet elite in a peaceful "Velvet Revolution".
On Friday, a stalwart of the old regime, former president Robert Kocharyan, was arrested on charges of attempting to overthrow the constitutional order.
The frontrunner to win the election is Nikol Pashinyan, an MP and former journalist who led the April revolt. He became interim prime minister but stepped down to campaign for a democratic mandate today.
Unlike similar protests in Ukraine and neighbouring Georgia, Armenia's Velvet Revolution was not overtly anti-Russian or pro-western, and Pashinyan courts both Moscow and the West.
"In terms of values he aligns to Europe; in terms of the country's economic and security issues he aligns with Russia," a diplomat said.
He has little choice. Russia has a military base here as well as vital economic and security links, giving it a tight strategic hold over this landlocked country with a population of 3m.
Pashinyan has met the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, several times this year but has also met EU leaders.
More than anything, his allies say, he is aware that the country needs money – from East or West. Some public sector workers, who formerly took bribes, want wage rises now that honesty is the rule.
His economic policies centre on recovering wealth from the old elite. Their convoys of blacked-out cars have vanished from Yerevan's wide boulevards.
"We've already been doing things differently," 43-year-old Pashinysan told The Sunday Times last week, adding: "The first point of our agenda is to encourage our people to be self-confident … to change their own lives."
Pashinyan has sold himself on his clean-cut credentials in contrast to the corruption and voter fraud rampant under the old regime.
Supporters and critics alike, however, worry that he is a protest politician, ill-equipped to rule. Diplomats and analysts in the country repeatedly described his administration as "chaotic". His chief of staff only recently gave up his day job as a DJ – though his skills have proved adept at calming angry crowds.
Although Pashinyan calls himself a man of the people, few in his administration appeared to have direct access to him. A cult of personality is emerging around him – his picture is on the walls of corner shops, his name is spoken with unusual reverence.
"I love him," said Sara Anjargolian, who was born in London and moved to Armenia in 2006. "The former government created this bubble around themselves. The corruption was absurd. What Pashinyan has done is brilliant."
Millennials were a driving force in the revolution, setting Facebook alive with slogans, mobilising after online calls from Pashinyan. Politicians say 250,000 took to the streets in April and May in what became a carnival in the streets of Yerevan.
But his appeal transcends generations. At a rally last week in Etchmiadzin, a small town home to what locals say is the world's oldest cathedral, a crowd of children, professionals and the cloth-capped elderly cheered as Pashinyan promised to smash the power of the oligarchs.
Away from the wine bars of Yerevan, much of Armenia is desperately poor. Roads are barely passable in the autumn rain, and around a third of the country lives in poverty.
"There is still a lot to be done," said Hamazasp Danielyan, a political scientist who is running for parliament for Pashinyan's party.
"There is hope. And some of the expectations are unrealistically high. But one of the most tangible changes is that now people think their actions can have an effect."