What Will Be the Outcome This Time: Messages from Pashinyan's Speech

Yesterday, at Republic Square, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan made several statements, the content of which either contradicted or at least did not align with his previous statements.

1. Pashinyan spoke about the necessity of constitutional amendments, stating: "Unfortunately, the Constitution creates numerous crisis risks. I believe it is time to record that we should work to adopt a new Constitution or constitutional amendments through a nationwide referendum this October, and, ultimately, transitioning to a semi-presidential system of governance should be one of the possible options." However, it is interesting to note that back in January 2020, Nikol Pashinyan considered the semi-presidential governance system as one of the failed ones. Specifically, during a press conference in Kapan, when discussing the possibility of returning to a semi-presidential system, he mentioned: "My position is that throughout the entire history of the Third Republic of Armenia, our country has had a failed governance system, and practically we have all seen this, and it has been proven. From the very next day of the revolution, there have been people who told me that we should quickly restore the semi-presidential system. They said it was good in the old system because there was a president, a prime minister, and in fact, all the levers were in the hands of the president, while the responsibility was in the hands of the prime minister. When problems arose, the president shifted his responsibility onto the prime minister, removed him from office, and a buffer was created. In general, if this option should be excluded for Armenia, if we theoretically move forward, we should not have anything half-hearted; either we should have a complete parliamentary system or a complete presidential governance system, where the president is also the head of government. My opinion is that we should not change the governance system," he said.

2. Nikol Pashinyan announced that Chief of General Staff Onik Gasparyan had executed Serzh Sargsyan's orders when making the known statement. However, it is interesting that he presented no evidence to support this claim, only assertions that Serzh Sargsyan is a thief, corrupt, and directing the Armed Forces. Notably, Pashinyan did not even mention the name of the second president Robert Kocharyan during his speech, despite discussing the events of March 1 and using general terms to describe the "previous governments."

3. Furthermore, the Prime Minister, who spoke with an opposition rhetoric, challenged parliamentary forces and gave a second opportunity for discussions to begin regarding early elections. Let us see how this story will end this time.

This is reported by the newspaper "Zhoghovurd".