Armenia’s Pashinian appointed PM after ‘velvet revolution’

ARMENIA’S president appointed former protest leader Nikol Pashinian as Prime Minister yesterday as the Caucasus country’s parliament met for the first time since an election last month.

Pashinian won a landslide victory in the snap December parliamentary elections, cementing his authority after he swept to power in a peaceful revolution last year. Speaking in the National Assembly, President Armen Sarkisian said the election had “endowed this parliament with a high legitimacy.” Only parties who backed Pashinian’s “velvet revolution” made it to parliament as a result of the vote which international monitors hailed as democratic. Pashinian’s Civil Contract party won 70.43 percent of the vote. “The main political change expected in Armenia has already happened: power has been returned to the people and democracy has been established,” Pashinian said in a meeting with the president according to the prime minister’s press service. PM Pashinian first became prime minister in May after spearheading weeks of peaceful anti-government rallies. But he resigned in October after efforts at reform stalled in the face of opposition from Sargsyan’s Republican Party. The move triggered a snap election which Pashinian said would “bring the velvet revolution to its logical end.” The Republican Party failed to clear the five percent threshold needed to make it into parliament.