Page 78 - bne_Magazine_February_2019

78 Opinion bne February 2019
"Nikol, Prime Minister" reads the text on a poster in the window of a car in Yerevan.
CAUCASUS BLOG: Now the hard part starts for
Nikol Pashinian, Armenia’s Robin Hood
Will Conroy in Prague
To say that ‘velvet revolutionary’ Nikol Pashinian is riding high right now would be to make what would have to go down as the understatement of the Armenian year. Having toppled the government back in the spring of 2018 with massive, unrelenting street protests over cronyism and corruption, Pashinian on December 9 led the My Step Alliance bloc to a crushing victory that will reshape the composition
of Armenia’s parliament. But, as he well knows, the hard part starts now.
The ‘old establishment’ Republican Party (HHK) has been well and truly vanquished. It picked up just short of the 5%-thresh- old of the vote that would have allowed it to enter the legisla- ture, compared to the 70.4% won by My Step. Pashinian clearly managed to maintain the spring energy unleashed by the revolution right through to the wintry snap poll.
Perhaps a good deal of HHK diehards didn’t bother to vote, feeling resistance was useless? Whatever the truth behind the astonishing collapse of the HHK – it had ruled Armenia since the late 1990s, though its election victories were often tainted by allegations of vote-buying and other electoral malfeasance – there is no denying that a huge number of the poverty- stricken and others among Armenia’s 2.9mn people have bought into Pashinian’s plans for a national rejuvenation. And they will want to see results.
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Economic matters to the fore
With one-third of Armenia’s populace mired in poverty accord- ing to the World Bank, economic matters will have to be to the fore, but first up is reassuring Russia that the feisty nation on its doorstep – also buoyed by international monitors describ- ing its general election as having been absolutely fair and dem- ocratic – has not undergone a “colour revolution” that aims to shift the country’s allegiances to the West.
A former newspaper editor and activist, who was jailed for stirring up unrest during tumultuous days of 2008, Pashinian is no slouch when it comes to the value of fast messaging and after his stunning election triumph he was quick to reiterate to the Kremlin via press briefings that, essentially, ‘there is
“The ‘old establishment’ Republican
Party (HHK) has been well and truly
vanquished”
nothing to see here’. "Our country is not under any influence," were his actual words as he stated that Armenia would also continue its cooperation with the European Union, although it had no plans to join Nato.