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April 27, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 2
Constitutional crisis
looms in Armenia
have to propose a new candidate by April 30.
MP and de facto leader of the opposition Nikol Pashinian is calling for daily public acts of disobedience that are becoming increasingly more organised and coordinated. He asked truck drivers to blockade the capital in a show of force that could bring the country to a standstill if this sort of action escalates.
In the meantime the ruling Republican Party
of Armenia (HHK) has nominated Acting Prime Minister Karen Karepetyan as their candidate for interim prime minister. Karepetyan is also a former prime minister.
However, Pashinian has demanded that no one from HHK stand for the job of interim prime minister and has said he would take the job himself, “if the people ask me to.”
A potential constitutional crisis is now in the offing.
If politicians do stick to the constitution then Pashinian and opposition parties are 13 votes short of the 53 seats they need in the legislature to appoint their own candidate.
The ruling HHK with 58 seats is in a position to block any candidate from the opposition and ram through their own choice, possibly confirming Karepetyan in his current position. The leader of the HHK faction Vahram Baghdasaryan said that his party will not vote for Pashinian.
Pashinian’s own party Yelk has only nine seats and the other leading opposition party Prosperous
Armenia (also know by the name of its founder and sponsor, businessman Gagik Tsarukyan) has 31. Another seven seats belong to the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) faction, which on April 26 said it was withdrawing form its coalition with HHK.
"Bearing in mind the current situation, we announce the termination of our participation in the political coalition," Dashnaktsutyun said in a statement, adding that parliament should elect a prime minister who "enjoys the people's confidence."
Yelk has already officially nominated Pashinian as its candidate for prime minister as the “people’s candidate” and so far the process is running according to the constitutional rules.
But even if all these parties united against HHK they don't have enough votes to force a new prime minister on the ruling elite.
The people’s choice?
In this case Pashinian has threatened to take the vote for the prime minister to the street by holding a rally in Republic Square and charging the crowd with the task of choosing the prime minister, which is clearly outside of the constitution.
If this scenario plays out it is not clear what
will happen next. The acting government would be within its rights to claim an attempted coup and send in the troops. Russia’s reaction is also unclear. Given the debacle in Ukraine, which went down the popular crowd-based route to oust Viktor Yanukovych from the presidency, rather than impeach him, which would have been the constitutional route – it is unlikely that Russia
will send any physical or military aid to the ruling party. However, given Russia’s machinations in