Armenia’s former president elected PM amid protests
YEREVAN: Armenia’s former president Serzh Sarkisian yesterday elected prime minister in a move the opposition says is designed to extend his chokehold on power despite protests in the impoverished country. Lawmakers backed the candidacy of the Kremlin-supported veteran politician with 77 to 17 votes, after his second and final term as president ended last week. The opposition denounced the votewhich makes Sarkisian Armenia’s top leader under a new parliamentary system of government-saying the 63-year-old lacked popular support.
Earlier in the day, several thousand demonstrators marched through the centre of the capital Yerevan and staged sit-in protests outside government buildings. Protesters blockaded the entrances to about a dozen government buildings, including those housing the foreign ministry and the central bank. A bigger protest was planned for in the evening. Ahead of the vote, Sarkisian blamed the opposition for rocking the boat. “Extinct volcanoes should not wake up if we want to live in a prosperous Armenia, in a country of the rule of law. And volcanoes will not wake up if no one provokes them.”
‘Start of velvet revolution’
Opposition leader Nikol Pashinyan urged Armenians to take to the streets en mass. “I proclaim today the start of a peaceful velvet revolution in Armenia,” he told a rally in Yerevan earlier in the day, calling on supporters to “paralyse the work of all government agencies”. Rallies were also held in the country’s second- and third-largest cities of Gyumri and Vanadzor. Police said 14 demonstrators were briefly detained. On Monday police used stun grenades as protesters sought to break through a barbed wire cordon in the centre of Yerevan in an effort to get to the parliament building. Authorities said 46 people including six police and opposition leader Pashinyan required medical help.
‘Nothing good’
Student Irina Davtyan said she skipped lectures to join the protests. “My generation-my friends and meare against Serzh Sarkisian and against his government,” she said on Monday. “He’s been in power for 10 years and we can all see that nothing good has come out of it.” The spokesman for the ruling party, Eduard Sharmazanov, has dismissed the protests as “the opposition’s artificial and fake agenda”. Sarkisian, a shrewd former military officer, has been in charge of the landlocked South Caucasus nation of 2.9 million since winning a presidential vote in 2008.
He stepped down last week after serving two consecutive presidential terms. He also held the office of prime minister in 2007-2008. The country’s new president, Armen Sarkisian, was sworn in last week but his powers will be weaker under the new system of government. Even though the two men share the same surname, they are not related. The constitutional amendments were passed after a referendum in December 2015, with some 63 percent of the voters backing the changes. After the plebiscite, thousands of opposition supporters rallied in protest against alleged mass violations at polling stations.
Council of Europe observers have said the referendum was marred by allegations of large-scale vote buying and multiple voting, among other irregularities. Opposition politicians say the shift to a parliamentary republic with a powerful prime minister has been designed to increase Serzh Sarkisian’s grip on power in the impoverished Moscow-allied country. “Sarkisian wants to perpetuate his rule,” the leader of the opposition Heritage party, Raffi Hovannisyan said. After Sarkisian was first elected in 2008, 10 people died in bloody clashes between police and supporters of the defeated opposition candidate. He won a second presidential term in 2013. — AFP