2 May, central Yerevan. (c) Ani Djaferian/Zuma Press/PA Images. All rights reserved.Armenia’s “Velvet Revolution”, declared by protest leader and parliamentarian Nikol Pashinyan, is shaking this small country’s towns and villages, bringing many of its citizens out onto the streets. Over the past three weeks, hundreds of thousands of people have blocked roads and public spaces in a bid to paralyse public transport, picketing public institutions and transport hubs. Their demands? The resignation of Serzh Sargsyan, who has ruled the country since 2008. Sargsyan’s eventual resignation, on 23 April, shocked everyone — and not only in Armenia. The Yelk (Way Out) opposition alliance, which gained slightly more than seven percent of the vote at the last parliamentary elections, has, in effect, brought down the ruling Republican Party’s parliamentary majority and the government. The past few weeks may taken their toll on people’s nerves, but the protests have been peaceful, without any loss of life.
Last week, the Republican Party frustrated attempts to appoint Nikol Pashinyan as prime minister in parliament. But there’s grounds to believe that Republican members of parliament will support the opposition leader on 8 May. Pashinyan, meanwhile, is promising the Armenian public simple things — and society has, it seems, on the whole believed him. But people don’t forget that they also believed Serzh Sargsyan when he first ran for president in 2008.
Daniel Ioannisyan, the head of the Union of Informed Citizens NGO, reminds me that Sargsyan used to assure Armenia voters that he’d never permit the country to regress in any field — whether the economy, democratic institutions or human rights. That was in 2008. And a year later, Armenia experienced an economic downturn. Back then, Sargsyan explained this situation by referring to the global financial crisis. In 2013, Ionnisyan tells me, Sargsyan stated that “a government, which cannot guarantee seven percent of economic growth, should resign”. The government, in the end, couldn’t guarantee that either. But in 2015, the authorities carried out a constitutional referendum, which transferred significant powers from the position of president to the prime minister. Sargsyan thus prepared a third term for himself as Armenia’s leader. As it turned out, Armenian society didn’t support this move.
