Nicol Pashinyan, a new Armenian prime minister, thanked his supporters and promised to recognize a volatile Karabakh region, the Daily Mail reported.
Mr Pashinyan, a fiery political orator who has spent the past decade in street politics, was himself elected as prime minister in a 59-42 vote in parliament. Weeks of peaceful mass protests are over in Armenia’s capital, the protests focused on frustration with widespread poverty and corruption in the country and on ex-President Serzh Sargsyan’s becoming prime minister, which was seen as a manoeuvre to remain the country’s leader indefinitely.
In a speech to Armenian parliament on Tuesday, the elected PM Nicol Pashinian said that his revolution will definitely lead to ‘the de-jure recognition of realizing the rights of Karabakh to self-determination.’ Any move to advance the region’s sovereignty would likely be met with considerable hostility from Azerbaijan and its ally Turkey. Both those countries closed their borders with Armenia over the conflict, leaving Armenia with direct land access only to Georgia and Iran.
Acting Armenia’s PM Karen Karapetyan made a remark on Facebook, thanks for the criticism and wishes all the best to the new PM.
“I would like to thank our government team. It was a team of extremely decent and patriotic people. I would like to thank the professional, unconstrained, bold and effective young people who entered public service in this period of time,”
he wrote.
Congratulating the new PM, Karapetyan wished numerous successes as well as a taking the office without crises and to be always understood by the people to Pashinyan and all other future PMs.
