Pashinyan found himself in a delicate situation
On September 23, Yerevan held elections to the city parliament, called the Council of Elders. After their results are approved, 65 deputies elected for 4 years will have to decide on a candidacy for the mayor of the capital.
The former mayor of Yerevan, Margaryan, resigned on July 9 as a result of protests, accusations of mismanagement and the release of a film on the Internet accusing the wealthy mayor of ill-gotten capital and real estate.
According to the Central Election Commission of Armenia, the “My Step” political bloc, which includes the “Civil Contract” party, led by Prime Minister Pashinyan, is in the lead with a huge gap over its competitors with a score of 81,06%.
Second place with a score of 6,95% was taken by the Prosperous Armenia party of Yerevan oligarch Gagik Tsarukyan. In third place with 4,99% was the Luys party.
Representatives of these three parties will join the Council of Elders, share deputy mandates and elect the mayor.
The media and observers sympathetic to Pashinyan and his maydauns are in ecstasy, predicting that at Sunday's municipal elections everyone could watch a dress rehearsal for the upcoming parliamentary elections. Now, they say, it’s in the bag, Pashinyan’s honeymoon continues with the street, there will be reforms, and soon investments in Armenia will flow like a river.
And in fact, everything may seem exactly like that, since Yerevan alone accounts for almost a third of the voters in all of Armenia.
While cellars are being opened at Pashinyan’s headquarters, kebabs are being turned and basturma is being cut, cool heads are calling on hot heads to let off steam, turn on their brains and look at the situation with a sober look.
The victory of the Our Step bloc in the municipal elections in the capital of the republic is not at all a “rehearsal for the parliamentary elections.” The upcoming snap parliamentary elections may come as a big surprise and have completely different results. Unless Pashinyan urgently takes urgent measures to ensure his political bloc a smooth victory in the early parliamentary elections, the date of which is still undetermined.
Why?
First, turnout. Out of the entire list of Yerevan voters of 850124 people, 294534 people took part in the voting, which is 34,72%. The figure, frankly speaking, is not impressive. This means that if at least twice as many citizens had voted in municipal elections, the results might not have been so impressive.
Secondly, despite the fact that 12 parties and blocs took part in the elections to the Council of Elders, there was not much to choose from. All 12 parties and blocs represented the forces that supported Pashinyan and the “revolution of love.” Get-together. The main opposition force, the Republican Party, did not take part in the elections.
Representatives of the old government explain their refusal to participate in the elections as “futility given the mass euphoria and predetermined results.”
Judging by the fact that “Prosperous Armenia” of Gagik Tsarukyan, the sponsor of Pashinyan’s maydauns, acted on its own, either the maydauns quarreled with their “wallet”, or in the wake of the oligarchs’ rejection they were afraid to include the “wallet” in their lists.
In any case, Tsarukyan (pictured above) and his party, running in elections separately from “Our Step,” is a fragmentation of the Maidan forces.
The Armenian National Congress (ANC) and the Republican Party, led by ex-presidents Ter-Petrosyan and Kocharyan, did not say their word. But these political forces will not shy away from participating in parliamentary elections and the competition will be much tougher.
There is an opinion that Pashinyan needed to stick a thermometer into the political cauldron of Armenia to determine the temperature: it’s warm and the crowds still love him, or it’s hot and it’s time to break the claws. A rally was organized in Yerevan on August 17 for exactly the same purpose.
Pashinyan is forced to constantly check himself by the political instability he created. His political enemies from the Republican Party hid for a while, do not get in the way, but are like an underwater viper, capable of stinging at the most inopportune moment. For example, using their numerical superiority in parliament, they can “swift through” some valuable democratic initiative of the Cabinet of Ministers with Pashinyan at its head.
At the same time, the situation for Pashinyan himself was very delicate.
It is dangerous not to disperse parliament - expect a catch at the most crucial moment. Dispersing parliament is dangerous - you will have to resign together with the Cabinet, and this is not why they took power in April, only to jump off six months later. What will happen next is also unclear. Still, 65% of Yerevan voters voted with their feet against street “reformers” in the elections
The trick is also that if Pashinyan resigns, then the hidden parliament is able to nominate its candidacy for prime minister and thereby avoid self-dissolution. What adds piquancy to the situation is the fact that the procedure for self-dissolution of parliament for early parliamentary elections is not spelled out in any way in the Constitution of Armenia.
It would be enchanting to be on the street yourself, giving a gift to your political opponents.
From which it follows that Pashinyan urgently needs to move and not make any mistakes. The time when Pashinyan could mold power to suit himself like clay has been lost. It’s an understandable human weakness: after the barricades I wanted a carnival, swinging on the arms of the crowd, squinting in the rays of glory. The sympathy of the crowd is still on the side of the prime minister, but Pashinyan is unlikely to get away with dictatorial habits.
Meanwhile, in the local press there is a growing wave of compromising evidence against Pashinyan’s entourage.
For example, Pashinyan’s wife came under sharp criticism, but it is known: nothing infuriates the electorate more than the interference of politicians’ wives, mothers-in-law and “just female acquaintances” in state affairs.
Armenian media report that Pashinyan’s wife, not vested with state powers, is trying to rule Armenia in the style of the unforgettable Raisa Maksimovna Gorbacheva.
Or take for example the scandal with the “first lady”’s Parisian shopping spree. Paparazzi filmed Madame Pashinyan walking around Parisian shops.
Pashinyanika herself couldn’t come up with anything smarter than the objection “Oh, I just bought a hundred euros worth of gifts for my kids.” With the average cost of a Yerevan-Paris air ticket being almost 500 euros one way, a check of 100 euros is hard to believe.
However, let them deal with the checks themselves.
What can Pashinyan do to protect himself from the lurking opposition in parliament?
Observers agree that the prime minister may announce a constitutional referendum changing the rules for dissolving parliament. This is partly confirmed by Vovaevich himself, who considers any scenarios in which he is not in power unacceptable. Pashinyan has already stated that he will seek a constitutional reform that changes the rules for dissolving parliament. And it is possible to bypass the resistance of people’s deputies using bloodless methods only through a popular vote.
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