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Eurasia
March 23, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 22
Armenian president suggests he will accept nomination as PM with extended powers
bne IntelliNews
Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan has given his strongest indication yet that he intends to switch to being a prime minister with extended powers. The indication came in an interview with Tert.am on March 19. The head of state's second term
in power will come to an end on April 9, and he indicated back in 2014 that he would not hold on to power past the constitutional limit.
However, as per the results of a referendum in December 2015, Armenia will switch to a par- liamentary republic come April, and most of the president's former responsibilities will be passed over to the prime minister who is appointed by the party that controls the majority in parliament. The Armenian parliament voted earlier in March for Armen Sarkissian (no relation), a former diplomat and academic that Sargsyan himself proposed, to become the country's new president.
Opponents of the ruling party have criticised the December 2015 referendum, which was plagued by accusations of irregularities, by claiming that it was Sargsyan's attempt to consolidate his power and that of his party – Sargsyan chairs the ruling Republican Party (HHK) – by staying on as prime minister with extended powers.
The move is very similar to other such changes of power in the region, most notably when it comes to the 2008 Russian presidential election when Dmitry Medvedev was elected president and Vladimir Putin became prime minister because he could not run for three consecutive terms as
Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan
president under the constitution, although Putin was always rumoured to continue to wield the real power in the country.
On March 19, Sargsyan said that his 2014 state- ments had been "taken out of context". “I still do not aspire to the post of prime minister. But I have never regarded myself as someone who is guided by prejudice or rigid thinking. I cannot fail to reck- on with the reality and think that I bear no respon- sibility for the future and our country’s smooth course,” he said. He added that the threats to Armenia's security – a wink to the ongoing con- flict with neighbouring Azerbaijan over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh – had increased since the referendum and that HHK was discussing with its junior coalition partner, Dashnaktsutyun, about who should be the country's next prime minister.
“But if we decide after all that my candidacy will
be nominated then that will be done with one supplement on my part to the effect that parallel
to fully performing my constitutional duties I will
be spending more time transferring our country’s entire visible and not visible experience of the past years to young political leaders. This is an issue which is extremely important right now,” he said, without naming any of the "young political leaders".
A newly formed opposition coalition staged protests in March against Sargsyan's bid to become prime minister, and threatened to continue with protests during the end of March and early April.