Who is Nikol Pashinyan: five facts about the leader of the 'Velvet Revolution' in Armenia

Two weeks ago, Nikol Pashinyan was just a noisy representative of a small opposition, relegated to the gallery of Armenian reality. Now he is the face of the Velvet Revolution, the man who challenged the most powerful politician in the country and defeated him in a matter of days.

Photo: news.day.az

Pashinyan led protests against Serzh Sargsyan, who relocated to the premiership after 10 years of presidency. Thousands of peaceful actions ended with the voluntary resignation of the head of state.

Edition Air force gathered five facts about the leader of the revolution in Armenia.

Pashinyan went to this 12 years, but now he is far from the goal. He admits that the real revolution has just begun: it turned out to be easy to mobilize those who are dissatisfied with Sargsyan, it will be more difficult to reformat the protest movement into a political one and break the political and economic system built over a decade.

Analysts and commentators agree that Pashinyan will remain at the forefront of Armenian politics. But who is he? Below are five facts about the leader of the Velvet Revolution.

1. Pashinyan is an experienced rebel

42-year-old opposition leader spent half his adult life on the barricades, underground or dungeons.

Photo: news.am

However, he always preached non-violent protest. After the parliamentary elections, 2007 held a sit-in strike. Two years later, he himself surrendered to the authorities and spent almost two years in prison, all the while denying charges of organizing mass riots after the presidential election of 2008.

In those elections, Serzh Sargsyan won with a minimal margin of 52,8%.

2. Pashinyan fought with Sargsyan throughout his political career

But always in coalitions with other oppositionists. The “Velvet Revolution” left him alone with his eternal enemy - and Pashinyan defeated him. “The protest was personified on both sides: on the opposition side, Pashinyan personified it on himself,” says Alexander Iskandaryan, director of the Caucasus Institute.

Photo: news.am

Pashinyan is an ally of the first President of Armenia Levon Ter-Petrosyan and in the 2007 parliamentary elections he supported the Impeachment bloc against President Robert Kocharyan and Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan. A year after the election of the head of state, Pashinyan took part in protests against Sargsyan the president.

3. Pashinyan is a field commander of the revolution, not a cabinet politician

A balding, squat man in a baseball cap and camouflage T-shirt looks more organic at a rally or in a crowd than at a parliamentary rostrum or in an office. He does not declare presidential or premiere ambitions, and observers assign him, albeit an important, but hardly the main role in post-revolutionary Armenia.

“The logic of the velvet revolutions is that the one who committed it must take responsibility for the country. Logic demands that Nikol Pashinyan is now in power and leading Armenia. Perhaps he will want to change this logic,” said Mark Grigoryan, executive director of the Public Radio of Armenia.

Pashinyan himself says that he considers Nelson Mandela a role model, a politician who, after defeating an enemy, devoted himself to the idea of ​​​​unifying a divided nation.

4. Pashinyan is not looking for a career as an eternal oppositionist

Despite the endurance of the underground worker and the image of the ringleaders of the disgruntled, Pashinyan is consistent in his desire to secure the mandate of voters. Even when he went to prison, he almost immediately put forward his candidacy for parliament, but lost the election.

Having been released under an amnesty, in 2012 he managed to become a deputy, and five years later he was re-elected again. Soon after this, Pashinyan raised the bar and entered the race for the post of mayor of Yerevan - but lost to the incumbent mayor from the ruling Republican Party.

Director of the Caucasus Institute Iskandaryan believes that Pashinyan will occupy “some kind of post” in the post-revolutionary executive authorities.

Pashinyan himself said that Sargsyan’s resignation is only the first milestone in a long struggle. Now we need to break the system built under Sargsyan and prevent actual power from remaining in the hands of the former president, perhaps with purely cosmetic changes. This in itself is not so simple, and here's why.

5. Pashinyan's political platform is not popular

In the last parliamentary elections in 2017, the bloc, which includes Pashinyan's party, scored less than 8% of votes. He represents the liberal opposition, which stands for the European integration of Armenia.

The “Velvet Revolution” was not made by her, but by a crowd of young non-party citizens who were actually not represented in parliament, notes Thomas de Waal, expert Carnegie endowment in the South Caucasus.

“This is why the country needs parliamentary elections now, but the opposition has neither a structure nor a party around which to unite supporters,” says de Waal.

Since after the constitutional reform Armenia moved from a presidential form of government to parliamentary, for a real change of power in the country, Pashinyan will have to not only put together a scattered opposition under the banner of the existing only a couple of weeks and even the nameless revolutionary movement, but also agree on a coalition for a majority in parliament, expert of the British Royal Institute of International Affairs Chatham House Lawrence Broer.

“Pashinyan diligently avoided belligerent rhetoric in the square. This is a good tradition, worth preserving,” he writes.

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From Charles Aznavour to Kim Kardashian: what do Armenian celebrities think of the 'Velvet Revolution'

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