FEAR OF THE DOOMED

Internal political crisis in Armenia is intensifying. The leadership of the country is desperate in its efforts to retain and expand its power under the existing circumstances when the former ruling circles use “counter-revolutionary” measures in order to reanimate the former regime.

Pashinian against the parliament

Brought to power by the protesting street movement, Nikol Pashinian now understands that he needs to have a parliament that meets his own interests in order to establish a fully legitimised power. Hence his recent attempts to hold extraordinary parliamentary elections, since the current parliament is dominated by the forces opposing the prime minister and is represented primarily by the Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) headed by the former president Serzh Sargsyan.

In spring 2018, the “street” forced the Sargsyan parliament to vote for the appointment of “national leader” Pashinian as the new head of the government. Since then, a de facto dual power has been established in Armenia. On the one hand, Pashinian and his men still enjoy the trust and support of a considerable mass of the population. On the other hand, there is a parliament controlled by the notorious “Karabakh clan”, where the allies of RPA, at least until recently, are Dashnaks and the infamous oligarch Gagik Tsarukian.

In fact, the relevance of extraordinary parliamentary elections was evident from the very beginning of the “velvet revolution”. However, Pashinian initially proposed holding elections in May-June 2019. The plan to hold extraordinary elections appeared after the “My Step” bloc, which includes the Civil Contract party headed by the Prime Minister, won the elections to the Council of Elders (City Council) of Yerevan with 81.06% of the votes. Pashinian decided that it no longer made sense to postpone the parliamentary elections until the next year, if he had the nationwide support. Therefore, he announced his intention to hold the elections in December 2018 so that the country enters the new year with a new parliament. Pashinian even expressed his willingness to resign in order to initiate early elections at the end of this year.

However, Pashinian's statement provoked a tough reaction from the current parliament. On October 2, majority of deputies adopted amendments to the law “On the Regulations of the National Assembly”, allowing the parliament to work even after the Prime Minister’s resignation. In addition, the parliament received the right to postpone the convention if the Prime Minister does not attend. So if Pashinian fulfills his promise and resigns, then the last meeting of the current parliament can be postponed indefinitely.

Thus, three factions of the parliament, RPA, the Tsarukian bloc and Dashnaktsutyun, voted for the bill blocking the parliament’s dissolution. The head of the government regarded this step as “the start of counter-revolution” and dismissed all the ministers and governors representing the opposition forces, in particular the Dashnaktsutyun Party and the Prosperous Armenia, which is part of the Tsarukyan bloc. At the same time, Pashinian made it clear that the early parliamentary elections might be held with a certain violation of rules. That is, the prime minister will not leave his post during the election campaign, because, according to Pashinian, “the people are against it.” The leader of the “velvet revolution” has demonstrated readiness to bypass the obstacles created by RPA and its allies. To make his opponents fully understand the meaning of his signals, Pashinian explicitly hinted at his readiness to start street protests of his supporters once again.

Moreover, the prime minister’s intention to prevent radical sentiments in the society in order to finally crush the RPA was confirmed by his open support for the establishment of the Sasna Tsrer party. It is the same party the militants of which captured and held for two weeks the building of the police regiment in Yerevan in July 2016. During the bloody confrontation, three policemen were killed, but this did not prevent Pashinian, after coming to power, to release 27 Sasna Tsrer members as “political prisoners”. The latter established a new party and announced that they will support Pashinian until the establishment of a new parliament. Furthermore, the Sasna Tsrer party addressed an unambiguous message to the supporters of the former regime in the National Assembly meaning: the parliament should be dissolved immediately, even if physical force is required. “If they resist, just take them by the arms and legs and throw them out of the parliament,” one of the leaders of Sasna Tsrer, Viruzhan Avetisian, threatened.

Apparently, such threats "reasoned" Tsarukian, who was considering the situation from practical point of view. Seemingly, the leadership of his bloc took into account that at this stage of events any resistance to Pashinian’s plans is fraught with a new wave of protests with uncomfortable consequences for those who resist the logic of the velvet revolution. Thus, Prime Minister Pashinian and the leader of the Prosperous Armenia Party, Tsarukian, signed a memorandum. The document makes the holding of early parliamentary elections in December possible, and in the event of the resignation of the Prime Minister, the Tsarukian bloc "as a contributing force to the revolution" undertakes not to nominate its candidate for premiership and not to assist any other candidate. The Republican Party of Armenia and Dashnaktsutyun also put forward a number of conditions under which the deputies of these factions are ready to discuss elections in December. On October 9, a number of deputies from the Republican Party supported the idea of ​​Pashinian. After which he declared that he was preparing to resign before October 16. "Extraordinary parliamentary elections should be held on December 9-10. It will become a reality if I resign before October 16," Armenpress agency quotes Armenian prime minister.

Thus, agreeing with the opposition forces, Pashinian made, perhaps, a decisive step towards the implementation of ​​the early elections in December, which promises him a “complete triumph” over his opponents.

Reaction against the “national leader”

However, Pashinian's steps towards strengthening and expanding his power do not veil the reality of serious problems that accompany the process of accession of the “national leader”. The first problem is that Pashinian has practically no other effective resources in his fight against the parliament but the street. Armenian experts admit that Pashinian's rating is not associated so much with those who share his views on Armenia's future, but with those who are simply tired of the decades of the ruling Kocharyan-Sargsyan regime. That is the reason why the slogan “Reject Serzh” gained popularity during the "velvet revolution". Thanks to this slogan and the masses supporting it, Pashinian made his victory in Yerevan, when people, choosing the mayor of the capital city, supported not the actor Hayk Marutian (Pashinian's supporter) but the power that implements the social order to reject the former regime.

The same is going to happen in the upcoming parliamentary elections in December, which is so zealously counteracted by the supporters of ex-presidents of the “Karabakh clan”, Robert Kocharian and Serzh Sargsyan. RPA, which has only one serious power resource (parliamentary majority), understands that holding elections, for example, in May next year, will not be fundamentally different from the December version. In any case, their results are predetermined in favour of Pashinian. However, the scale of public reaction supporting the “national leader” has noticeably weakened in comparison with the image prevailing in spring 2018. Supporters of Sargsyan have every reason to believe that the nationwide admiration for Pashinian will decline further, according to the irreversible logic of gradual decline of revolutionary euphoria. So, the RPA still has a chance to at least keep afloat political wave, not to mention the possibility of taking revenge in the foreseeable future. This is also supported by the same disappointing Armenian reality, namely the state of the Armenian economy.

Regardless of the ongoing "revolutionary" action in the country, the national economy continues its uncontrollable roll into the abyss. Meanwhile, the “velvet-revolutionary” power has not yet voiced any real domestic and foreign policy action program. Nor could it provide any public guarantees concerning the improvement of the living conditions of Armenian population. Being in opposition, Pashinian regularly made statements about the urgency to increase salaries and pensions. However, his draft state budget for 2019 assumes that the minimum salary and labour pensions in Armenia will remain at the same level.

On the other hand, criminal records complement the “revolutionary” unrest prevailing in the country. The murder of former Member of Parliament, Karo Karapetian, provoked a loud resonance. Another former member of the Armenian parliament, Harutyun Karagezian, was accused of committing financial crimes. The latter was soon found dead in the village of Zovuni, while law enforcement agencies suspect suicide.

These are the realities of Armenia - a country immersed in the most severe economic and political crisis, which eventually found itself on the sidelines of regional integration as a result of its military aggression against Azerbaijan. The events of recent months should convince the Armenian public and, above all, the new authorities of the country that Armenia is doomed to failure in all areas without peace and cooperation with Azerbaijan. The lack of concrete measures for a substantive dialogue with Azerbaijan, which is equivalent to the failure of the process of peaceful settlement of the conflict, only encourages internal Armenian reaction, adherents of the former regime, promising them a chance of return to the power. Considering the inability of the “revolutionary” regime, it is their chance to eliminate poverty of the population and the bloody showdowns, as well as the objectively growing fear in Armenia regarding the ever more realistic outlines of a possible war with Azerbaijan.