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Armenia: in the face of protests, Prime Minister considers elections

The political crisis continues in Armenia. While the resignation of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pachinian is demanded by the opposition, he said Monday he was ready to organize early parliamentary elections to end the political crisis in this Caucasian country. “If the parliamentary opposition agrees with early elections, we will also agree,” said Nikol Pachinian, whose party currently has a majority in Parliament, in front of thousands of his supporters gathered in the center. from the capital Yerevan.

“I will give a second chance (to the opposition), let’s go to the elections to see the resignation of who is demanded by the people,” he declared. “It is you who gave me the status of Prime Minister and it is only you who can lift it for me,” added Nikol Pachinian, who came to power in 2018 on the wave of a popular protest against the regime. ex-president Serge Sarkissian.

“The only one responsible”

The opposition calls for the resignation of Nikol Pashinian, described as a “traitor” since he accepted in November, under pressure, a peace agreement confirming a humiliating defeat against the sworn enemy, Azerbaijan, in the independence region of Nagorno-Karabakh. “We do not want the return of the former leaders, we elected Pachinian and we trust him,” Nariné Garibian, a 59-year-old artist, told Agence France-Presse at the rally in support of the prime minister.

For several thousand supporters of the opposition gathered Monday near Parliament, it is on the contrary Nikol Pachinian who is “solely responsible” for the defeat. “They sold our land,” protested Ovesp Ovessepian, a 65-year-old retiree. “Pachinian is solely responsible for losing the war, he alone,” he assured Agence France-Presse. Protesters set up a tent camp near Parliament, promising to stay there until Nikol Pachinian and his government resign, according to a reporter from Agence France-Presse. Rival protests on Monday coincided with the anniversary of the unrest following the March 2008 presidential election, which left 10 people dead.

Political crisis

The confrontation between the Prime Minister and the opposition, which had been simmering for months in this poor Caucasian country, was dramatically revived Thursday by the general staff’s call for the resignation of Nikol Pachinian. The Prime Minister immediately denounced an attempted military coup, ordered the dismissal of the army chief and gathered 20,000 supporters in the streets that same day. For its part, the opposition has also mobilized with three consecutive days of demonstrations, from Thursday to Saturday.

Further aggravating the situation, President Armen Sarkissian, a political opponent of Nikol Pachinian, refused on Saturday to validate the dismissal of the army chief, arguing that the crisis “cannot be resolved by frequent changes of officials”. Faced with the risk of debacle, the Armenian army asked the head of government in November, after six weeks of fighting, to accept a ceasefire negotiated by Russian President Vladimir Putin and which involved significant territorial losses and the deployment of Russian peacekeeping forces.

If it kept most of the separatist region, Armenia lost the symbolic city of Shusha, as well as a glacis of Azerbaijani territories surrounding the region. The war killed around 6,000 people. The military has so far supported the prime minister but let go last week after the dismissal of a senior official who criticized Nikol Pashinian’s claims that the defeat was in part due to ineffectiveness of a Russian weapon system, the Iskander missile launchers.


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