14 April: Nikol Pashinyan on Freedom Square, Yerevan. CC BY-SA 4.0 Yerevantsi / Wikipedia. Some rights reserved.Four months ago, Armenian parliamentary deputy Nikol Pashinyan, his spouse Anna Hakobyan and their daughter Arpi were on a New Year’s Eve programme on Armenia’s state-controlled Public TV. They were making idle talk about holiday routines when the anchor wondered if Pashinyan had asked Santa for anything political.
“I think in politics, people are the Santa Claus,” Pashinyan said. “And I want our people to realise that the notion that they cannot change anything is wrong, that in fact they decide their destiny.”
These words proved to be nothing short of prophecy. In just 10 days in April, acts of civil disobedience by a determined few snowballed into massive, unprecedented nationwide protests that forced Serzh Sargsyan, Armenia’s leader since 2008, to resign. And thanks to the protests, Pashinyan is now positioned to succeed Sargsyan.
