Armenia’s Pashinyan vows to resume "Velvet Revolution" reforms

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said the country’s improved security environment has given his government an opportunity to resume work on the unimplemented part of the agenda of the 2018 “Velvet Revolution.”

Pashinyan made the remarks during a government meeting, saying that years of crises had forced the authorities to focus primarily on managing emergencies rather than pursuing the full scope of their reform agenda, Caliber.Az reports, citing Armenian media.

“Since mid-2018, we took over the governance of the Republic of Armenia... 2019... And since March 2020, we have essentially been in a state of continuous crisis management — first because of COVID-19, then because of the war and the subsequent problems of the post-war period, and so on,” Pashinyan said.

He noted that most of the government’s resources, attention and efforts had been directed toward addressing challenges arising from both external and internal factors during that period.

According to Pashinyan, this was one of the main reasons the authorities were unable to devote the same level of attention to the agenda of the “people’s, non-violent, Velvet Revolution” as they had in 2018–2019.

“The distinctive feature of the government’s program is that peace and this new atmosphere give us an opportunity to fully return to the unimplemented part of the agenda of the people’s, non-violent, Velvet Revolution of 2018,” he said.

Pashinyan stressed that his government had continued pursuing reforms despite the successive crises.

“The good news is that throughout this entire period of crisis management, we never for a moment stopped implementing the reform agenda,” he said.

The Armenian prime minister added that he was confident the government now possessed the institutional capacity needed to continue implementing the revolution’s agenda, saying that current developments demonstrated this potential.

By Vafa Guliyeva