Armenia’s protest leader Nikol Pashinyan claimed that the opposition would boycott a possible snap parliamentary election, the Russian news agency Sputnik reported on April 27.
The confrontation between the Armenian government and the opposition is developing for about two weeks. After the Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan resignation on April 23, the acting one Karen Karapetyan suggested holding a snap parliamentary election. Contesting government’s decision, the protest actions in Armenia spread across the country’s capital Yerevan, after in Gyumri and several other towns.
The Republican Party of Armenia (RPA), strongly opposed by Pashinyan’s movement, doesn’t want to surrender its power to the oppositional candidate. However, other parties of the government do not share the position of the RPA. The Prosperous Armenia party, headed by businessman Gagik Tsarukyan, joined the protest actions in Yerevan on April 25. Minister of Sport and Youth Affairs Hrach Rostomyan resigned and joined the protests, the run-state Armenia news reported.
“I am calling on my Republican and Dashnak counterparts to join people and fulfill their demands,” Rostomyan said.
The Democratic Party of Armenia (DPA), headed by former First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Republic Aram Sarkisian, also joined protests.
On April 26, Pashinyan invited Karapetyan to start the second round of negotiations on April 27. However, Karen Karapetyan refused to engage in talks with Pashinyan as they had no prospects.
“The acting prime minister believes the talks in which one side dictates the agenda, and the other can’t submit an agenda can’t be considered talks,” spokesman Aram Araratyan wrote on Facebook.
During the press conference, the opposition’s leader stressed again his willing to remove the current power, Armenia news reported on April 27:
“We believe that the people’s victory should be recorded de jure, too; that is, the matter is whether the [ruling] RPA wants to resolve the crisis. If an RPA member is elected Prime Minister, the crisis will not be resolved.”
Pashinyan added, that on May 1, when the National Assembly (NA) would start debates on the election of the new Prime Minister, he would expect to see hundreds of thousands of Armenian citizens in the streets of capital city Yerevan.
Commenting on the issue that he might not have enough mandates during the vote at the NA, Nikol Pashinyan said:
“I think our main mandate is the mandate of the people of Armenia and the Armenian people in the Diaspora. Thousands of people from Russia, Europe, America come and participate in demonstrations. They want such changes so that they could return, live and do business in Armenia. This is the main mandate, the parliament must bear in mind the will of the people.”
He also assured that Russia would not intervene in Armenia’s internal affairs:
“I am sure, and the Russian authorities can also be sure that 90% of the Armenians in Russia support us. Rallies are held in several Russian cities in support of the movement. Thousands of Armenians came here to support us. Many of them are Russian citizens. I am sure that Russia will respect the position of its own citizens.”
Logical move from a political party that got 8% vote last time around…
Yeah you’re right, hence they’re trying to stage a coup paid for by their masters across the Atlantic. But they should take a peak at Syria and Libya and the government should take their case to the general populace and mobilise their support base too as it’s always done in Iran, before these traitors took them to the point of no return. The vultures are already circling above.
then they will lose
Zero sum mentality on display from the Craptor, as always. ‘Zero sum gain’ cannot be defined as a strategy unto itself, surely not for a self proclaimed ‘victor’. More like a telltale revelation of the abject failure to realize a positive outcome. Essentially a futile, immoral path of diminishing returns and eventual oblivion. Yet this is the childish mindset of the deluded US elites in our present day and age. A vindictive minset repeated by useful idiots and paid shills such as Craptor. If this is what an ‘american century’ looks like, the sooner it’s over, the better for the world and humanity. Presently it looks like it’s shaping up to be the shortest century ever Lol! Heck, it even makes the third reich look downright progressive and far-sighted!
The “opposition”‘s discourse smacks of demagoguery: The people here, the will of the people there. Why do they oppose then a snap election? If the people are called to vote, isn’t that the will of the people? What is the democracy they want? A la Ukrainian? Street meetings, storm the institutions, seize physical power, and then call elections under their control? Of course the West will hail this as a movement for democracy!