Pundit: Armenian PM losing ground as parliament speaker striving for power

Armenian political analyst Argishti Kiviryan has said that proceeding from the recent events, disobedience to superiors is observed within the Armenian government.

“I think this is a purely domestic political issue, and world players have nothing to do with it. This was an expected process, and we see an obvious crisis within the government. I’ve been saying for a whole year that the power may change in Armenia within the ruling elite, rather than during the rallies,” Kiviryan said in an interview with the Armenian media, Caliber.Az reports.

“The demarche of President of the Armenian National Assembly Alen Simonyan, who posted a photo on Facebook in support of his brother, shows that this is neither a democratic nor an authoritarian country, but simply a farce and a mess. In fact, Simonyan is trying to frame Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan with this act. He receives this strength and political resource from the 'former' officials as perhaps, he considers himself, in a certain sense, a bridge with the 'former' officials. One of the bridges,” the political analyst noted.

“Moreover, Simonyan’s factor is the most important one as Armenia is a parliamentary country because Pashinyan is the head of the executive branch, while Simonyan is the head of the legislative branch. In such cases, we are actually dealing with a deep crisis between the leaders of the executive and legislative branches. If these crises are not resolved in parliamentary countries like ours, they can bring down the entire system. There is only one logical solution here, someone must resign, and if this does not happen, that is, such a situation will remain, then these cracks in power will deepen even more. It may turn out that people inside the government will see that there is another centre, represented by Simonyan, and may act against Pashinyan and remain in their positions. It's just an axiom. Until now, by remaining silent and unable to resolve the process of creating parallel centres within his government, Pashinyan is actually losing ground,” Kiviryan said.

“The problem is that a political field has not been formed in Armenia during 30 years. The gangs have been created, there used to be gangs, and now there are gangs. Therefore, they are guided by gangster laws,” the political analyst added.