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One month after Armenia’s Velvet Rev­o­lu­tion brought an end to about two decades of Repub­li­can Party rule, Nikol Pashinyan’s gov­ern­ment has inspired hope among many, but also has a lot of promises to fulfil.

‘Dvoyevlastiye’ Armenian style

To the outside world, the Armenian rev­o­lu­tion ended on 8 May, when Nikol Pashinyan became prime minister. In reality, the internal political process remains tense and dynamic.

Leaders of the protest movement have assumed positions in the executive gov­ern­ment, but their adver­saries have kept sig­nif­i­cant influence over the gov­ern­ment system, par­tic­u­lar­ly the leg­is­la­ture, the judiciary, and local self-gov­ern­ment. These include such key positions as the Mayor of Yerevan, the pros­e­cu­tor general, and the rectors of most uni­ver­si­ties.

The peaceful and con­sti­tu­tion­al character of the change of gov­ern­ment allowed the ancien régime to maintain their positions in gov­ern­men­tal struc­tures, but, most impor­tant­ly, keep in place the informal clien­telist network created through­out the years of the Repub­li­can Party’s rule. Hence, the situation in Armenia can be described by the term cohab­i­ta­tion, or ‘dvoyevlastiye’, to use a Russian term asso­ci­at­ed with the 1917 rev­o­lu­tion, which literally means ‘having two gov­ern­ments’.

This state of affairs cannot be main­tained for long, as the expe­ri­ence of most rev­o­lu­tions tells us. Appar­ent­ly, the Repub­li­cans’ cal­cu­la­tion is that the new inex­pe­ri­enced gov­ern­ment will inevitably fail, and the Repub­li­cans will stage a tri­umphant return.

While this scenario is highly unlikely given the low approval rating of Repub­li­cans and con­tin­u­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of Pashinyan, Repub­li­cans still have enough resources to com­pli­cate issues for Pashinyan’s gov­ern­ment. Besides, in an atmos­phere of universal pop­u­lar­i­ty and unre­al­is­tic expec­ta­tions, Pashinyan’s gov­ern­ment has little room to increase its support, so its approval ratings are likely to go down at some point. The question is to what extent.

As a result, if this situation continues long enough, the real winners may be the remaining political forces, such as the Armenian Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Fed­er­a­tion and Pros­per­ous Armenia, who may accu­mu­late the support that Pashinyan’s block loses. However, at this point, the Armenian Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Fed­er­a­tion and Pros­per­ous Armenia are both a part of the governing coalition, and it is not yet clear what form their par­tic­i­pa­tion in future elections could take.

The upcoming snap election is one of the most discussed topics in Armenia. When Pashinyan was elected prime minister, the under­stand­ing was that a snap election must be called as soon as possible, in a matter of months. However, today it is obvious that calling a snap election will require time.

The Repub­li­cans are fiercely resisting the per­spec­tive of a snap election, as they realise that the election may be an electoral disaster for them. Besides, many Repub­li­can MPs, espe­cial­ly those who report­ed­ly own sig­nif­i­cant busi­ness­es, are extremely inter­est­ed in main­tain­ing their par­lia­men­tary immunity at any cost. All this means that the Repub­li­can Party faction will try to postpone the election as long as possible. This means, according to the logic of choosing the lesser evil, that they will probably vote to approve Pashinyan’s cabinet programme in par­lia­ment, because if the programme is not approved it could lead to a snap election.

In the driver’s seat: the new government’s first steps

While Pashinyan’s sup­port­ers should be inter­est­ed in holding a snap election as soon as possible, now they seem to have accepted that an election cannot be organised sooner than in a few months.

First of all, they have repeat­ed­ly announced that the election needs to take place after a sig­nif­i­cant revision of the electoral code, which in its current form is full of loopholes and opens the way for manip­u­la­tion of the vote. Reforming it will take time, espe­cial­ly since the Republic majority in par­lia­ment may try to obstruct the reform. Besides, the time before the election may also be ben­e­fi­cial for Pashinyan, who needs to build his electoral coalition as well as local party organ­i­sa­tions in the regions of Armenia.

Before recent events, his party, Civic Contract, was quite small and as were its allies in the Yelk electoral block — the parties Enlight­ened Armenia and Republic. Obviously, the rev­o­lu­tion brought Pashinyan thousands of devoted sup­port­ers, but they still need to be organised into a certain structure, in order to function as a fully-fledged political party.

While keeping their eyes on the upcoming election, Pashinyan and his cabinet need to focus on the day-to-day man­age­ment of the country, and they also need to deliver certain results in order to satisfy at least partly the expec­ta­tions of society. Since they do not control par­lia­ment, Pashinyan has so far mostly refrained from leg­isla­tive ini­tia­tives, focusing on using the executive levers to attain results that can be presented to the public.

Pashinyan’s promises of fighting against monop­o­lies and corrupt practices in the economy have already mate­ri­alised in several measures, which have also prompted fierce resis­tance. The National Security Service uncovered serious breaches of the law in companies belonging to Samvel Alek­sanyan, Armenia’s alleged sugar mogul and owner of a major super­mar­ket chain. After this several major super­mar­ket chains who used the same tax evasion scheme, raised prices, claiming that this was because from now on they would have to pay higher taxes. This was condemned by Pashinyan as sabotage, and he called on the pop­u­la­tion to boycott chains that engaged in this practice, after which the super­mar­ket chains back­tracked and returned prices to their previous levels.

Appar­ent­ly, Pashinyan’s gov­ern­ment has also peaked the interests of Armenian-Russian oligarchs: it scrapped a major energy deal involving Russian bil­lion­aire Samvel Kara­petyan. In any case, the gov­ern­ment has to tread carefully on this issue, as on the one hand, it needs to register a victory in this struggle, but at the same time, if it goes too far, it risks provoking closures of companies and a flight of capital.

Pashinyan’s gov­ern­ment faces crit­i­cisms both from the left and from the right. Some of his steps have been crit­i­cised as populist, such as his sug­ges­tion to cancel the fines of car drivers and to tem­porar­i­ly switch off speed cameras. In other cases, he has received criticism from his more radical sup­port­ers for not doing enough.

He has par­tic­u­lar­ly come under fire over the issue of political prisoners, many of whom are still in jail even after the change of gov­ern­ment. Pashinyan has vowed to release all of them, but he has also stressed that it had to happen in full accor­dance with the law. He has argued that if he was to pressure the courts into releasing political prisoners, this would mean that the new gov­ern­ment is no different from the previous one.

Espe­cial­ly com­pli­cat­ed is the issue of the Dare­dev­ils of Sasun, the members of which staged an armed uprising in the summer of 2016. While many Armenians consider them heroes and see them as political prisoners, others, even among Pashinyan’s sup­port­ers, consider them criminals and their methods unac­cept­able. Pashinyan has suggested that the issue of the Dare­dev­ils of Sasun should be solved based on a just trial, followed by wide public dis­cus­sion in which all inter­est­ed groups need to take part, including relatives of the victims of these events — in other words, some form of tran­si­tion­al justice needs to take place. While this indeed seems the optimal way out, it is easier said than done and the issue of the Dare­dev­ils of Sasun will probably remain one the most com­pli­cat­ed and sensitive issues the new gov­ern­ment will have to deal with.

While some of former Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan’s opponents are still in prison, the Repub­li­can Party has started to talk about the ‘political per­se­cu­tion’ of its members. Some members of the Repub­li­can Party compared the situation to the 1937 Stalinist repres­sions, in con­nec­tion with the case of Davit Ham­bardzumyan, the mayor of Masis, a small town near Yerevan, who during the days of rev­o­lu­tion was involved in an attack against pro­test­ers who had sealed off a street. Iron­i­cal­ly, now, when the mayor has been detained, his relatives, including his wife and mother, have staged their own protest in Masis, sealing off a street to protest the ‘unfair detention’.

Fifty Repub­li­can members of par­lia­ment have signed a letter calling for his release and vouching he would not try to flee the court’s judgement. His release was granted by judge Tatevik Grigoryan, the same judge who sentenced oppo­si­tion leader Zhirayr Sefilyan to 11 years a year earlier.

The times they are a-changin’: the reaction of the public

There is one thing that Pashinyan and his team have already succeeded in doing: they have rev­o­lu­tionised com­mu­ni­ca­tion between the gov­ern­ment and the public. Pashinyan himself started a tradition, followed by most of his team members: talking to the public directly through live videos on Facebook.

During his first week as prime minister, Pashinyan went live once or twice a day, and these videos were watched by hundreds of thousands of users. His video from 26 Baghramyan Avenue, the former residence of Serzh Sargsyan, currently has 1.2 million views on Facebook. In another popular video, Pashinyan shows his family settling in his new home at the gov­ern­ment dacha. Armenians have joked that this is the best reality tele­vi­sion show ever, some even called it Keeping up with the Pashinyans, playing on the title of the Hollywood TV show featuring the Kar­dashi­an family.

The Facebook ‘lives’ are part of the general change in political culture that Armenia has undergone in a matter of weeks. As recently as three months ago, the political discourse resembled the years of Soviet stag­na­tion, with the Repub­li­cans praising Serzh Sargsyan as the only possible leader that Armenia could have. Their speeches were full of mil­i­taris­tic and clerical language, while the oppo­si­tion warned of upcoming ‘Turk­meni­sa­tion’ and ‘total­i­tar­i­an­ism’, as the wider public seemed apathetic and resigned.

Today, the nature of the public dis­cus­sion has changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly. Even the Repub­li­cans are using the language of democracy, human rights, and the will of the people. There is an unprece­dent­ed level of public activity. Social networks, which have been an active platform for dis­cus­sion in Armenia for years, are exploding with political dis­cus­sions, open letters, demands, calls for action. Almost every day there are dozens of dis­cus­sions, meetings, and seminars organised by the gov­ern­ment, NGOs, and members of the public. Local protests are taking place, e.g. the students of Yerevan State Uni­ver­si­ty are demanding the res­ig­na­tion of the rector, sup­port­ers of political prisoners are demanding their release, and so on. Appar­ent­ly, this atmos­phere has also spread to Nagorno-Karabakh, where protests erupted on 2 June, after a fight involving local National Security Service members.

[Read on OC Media: Protests hit Nagorno-Karabakh after security forces ‘beat up two’]

The spirit of change is every­where in Armenia. One day, this hyper­ac­tiv­i­ty may lead to exhaus­tion and a return to apathy, but at this point, Armenians seem to have dis­cov­ered that they are the ones in control of their country’s destiny. And whatever the zigzags of the post-rev­o­lu­tion politics, this real­i­sa­tion of both oppor­tu­ni­ty and respon­si­bil­i­ty that comes with democracy is hardly going to go away.