Legitimacy for Pashinyan

The Prime Minister of Armenia seeks the early elections of the parliament in order to consolidate his power

In Armenia, tens of thousands of people took to the streets again. Citizens protested against the bill blocking the dissolution of the parliament, and, as a result, the opportunity to hold early elections in December this year.

Protesters, called by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, gathered at the parliament building in Yerevan, and the prime minister himself announced his resignation in the coming days. The resignation of the head of the government by law entails the self -surveillance of the Legislative Assembly and early elections.

Pashinyan’s desire to conduct new elections to the CIS Country, Arkady Dubnov, explains the fact that the current leadership of the country received “its revolutionary legitimacy in the square”:

- This support is unconditional and is not called into question. But if Armenia wants to consider himself a country where the law runs, then, of course, this kind of revolutionary legitimacy should be confirmed by the legitimacy of the constitutional - that is, Pashinyan should confirm their status through the victory of his party in the parliamentary elections.

However, the holding of early elections in December did not meet the plans of parliamentary parties that did not support the current prime minister. The former ruling Republican Party (once led by ex-president Sergey Sargsyan), as well as the “prosperous Armenia” and “Dashnaktsutyun” voted for the bill blocking the self-surveillance of parliament. Among the factors because of which the Republican Party would now be unprofitable to participate in the elections, Dubnov calls the return to the policy of the second president of the Republic of Robert Kocharian. It was against him that the case was recently opened for trying to attempt the coup in 2008. This step not only raised doubts about the professionalism of the new leadership of Armenia, but also consolidated the opponents of the prime minister around Kocharian.

“The support of Moscow and Putin personally are visible behind this factor,” the expert is convinced. “He demonstrated his habit not to give friends, publicly congratulating Robert Kocharyan on his birthday.”

Congratulations, published even on the Kremlin website, was perceived in Yerevan as an obvious gesture of Moscow's solidarity with ex-president Kocharyan. But this does not mean at all that the Russian-Armenian relations awaits a deterioration: according to Dubnov, Moscow seeks to show that he respects the choice of the people, and Yerevan behaves as carefully as possible after the reputation damage caused by the new administration against Robert Kocharyan and the Secretary General of the CSTO Yuri Khachaturov (also accused of attempt by the 2008 state coup).

At the same time, Kocharian has no real chance of returning to power, the expert believes. The fact is that folk support is still on the side of Pashinyan. Perhaps Kocharian will support the “revenge or counter -revolutionary minority” from the parliament, but the parliament itself today does not at all reflect Armenian realities and folk moods.

Prime Minister Pashinyan has already fired six ministers from parliamentary parties who supported the bill. At the same time, he tried to conclude an agreement by which none of the parties of the parliament would nominate his candidate for the post of head of government. According to the legislation, if no candidate is nominated within two weeks, the parliament must self -dissolve.

If everything goes according to this scenario, then the elections will take place in December of this year. At the moment, the support of the people is on the side of the current prime minister: according to the results of the elections to the Council of Elders of Armenia, Blok Pashinyan received 81% of the places. The post of mayor of Yerevan was also occupied by the supporter of the Prime Minister, “And Yerevan is the quintessence of moods in the republic,” Dubnov notes.

With a peaceful and non-violent protest of the street that supports Pashinyan, Armenia awaits the legislative consolidation of the positions of supporters of the current leadership led by Prime Minister Pashinyan.

-The main thing is that no one could still say that behind what is happening in Armenia are Western manipulators, state deputy, magpies and other anti-Russian structures that only dream of sticking a knife in the back of the Eurasian unity. Therefore, the first task until December is to keep the process in the channel of non -violent actions. If this is possible to provide and avoid provocations, then, I think, in December we can witness a serious victory of the Pashinyanovsky majority in parliament, ”concludes Dubnov.