Armenia pulls off peaceful revolution

Opposition leader Nikol Pashinyan was elected Armenia’s prime minister on Tuesday, capping a peaceful revolution driven by weeks of mass protests against corruption and cronyism in the former Soviet republic.

Moscow, which has a military base in Armenia, is wary of an uncontrolled change of power that would pull the country out of its orbit, but Pashinyan has offered assurances that he will not break with the Kremlin.

Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated Pashinyan on his election.

The election of Pashinyan, a former newspaper editor who spent time in prison for fomenting unrest, marks a dramatic rupture with the cadre of rulers who have run Armenia since the late 1990s.

Minutes after parliament voted to make him prime minister, Pashinyan travelled to a square in the capital, Yerevan, where tens of thousands of cheering supporters, many wearing T-shirts bearing his portrait, waited to greet him.

“The people won,” Pashinyan told the crowd.

Throughout the protests, Pashinyan had dressed in a camouflage T-shirt and militarystyle cap, an outfit that became his trademark. But on Tuesday he changed into a suit and tie.

Pashinyan, born in 1975, spearheaded a protest movement that first forced veteran leader Serzh Sargsyan to step down as prime minister and then pressed the ruling party to abandon attempts to block his election as prime minister, the country’s most powerful post.

In a vote in parliament on Tuesday, a total of 59 legislators backed Pashinyan’s candidacy, including some from the ruling Republican Party, with 42 voting against. In Yerevan’s Republic Square, Pashinyan’s supporters watched the voting on huge television screens. When the result was shown, there were chants of “Nikol!”, white doves were released into the air and people hugged and kissed each other. “We won! We made history today!” said Gurgen Simonyan, a student.

Pashinyan’s protest movement was sparked when Sargsyan, barred by the constitution from seeking another term as president, became prime minister instead. Many Armenians saw that as a cynical ploy by Sargsyan to extend his hold on power.

Since it emerged as an independent state after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Armenia, a majority Christian country, has been locked in a territorial conflict with mainly Muslim Azerbaijan and is under economic blockade from Turkey. Its isolation led it to depend heavily on Moscow. /