The Civic Contract party led by Nikol Pashinyan suffered defeats in local elections in 15 out of 36 enlarged communities of Armenia on Sunday.
This time as well, Nikol Pashinyan attempted to shift the blame on the former authorities and present his team’s defeat as an achievement for the country.
"No matter how obvious it may seem that the priorities of our agenda are related to external challenges, I must state, however, that this quality of local self-government elections, where the citizen is the Master and Decision Maker, is a long-held dream come true,” he wrote on Facebook on Monday.
“I understand the point of view that it is better to rig elections but have a higher level of security, however I have been and remain convinced that it was the long-standing practice of election fraud which undermined the state resistance system formed in the early 1990s and led to security disasters as a result of chain reactions,” he noted.
“The statehood and state institutions must be the guarantee of our future,” Pashinyan added.
Many people in the comments below his post confessed their love for "Mr. Prime Minister" and urged him to act more decisively, use the “hammer and put an end to the velvet”.
In the meantime, most users simply lashed out at Pashinyan.
"The master of the country is indeed its citizens, but instead of citizens you yourself decided to raise the prices of water, which is their property,” one of them wrote.
Another person accused him of having no idea of the concept of statehood, calling him a “dilettante, who has ceded lands”.
"You ruined the core of the nation, and now you're talking about elections… step down and leave, the Armenian people don't accept you,” one of the users said.
Some people also criticized Pashinyan for repeatedly putting the blame on the former authorities.
“Only the weak men blame others for their failures. The strong men admit and fix their mistakes and move forward,” a user commented.