Pashinian said the Armenian opposition is trying in vain to replicate the “velvet revolution” that brought him to power in 2018.
“They think that if they repeat everything, do things the same way, mimic, they will succeed,” he said during his government’s question-and-answer session in the Armenian parliament.
Opposition supporters again blocked streets and marched through various parts of Yerevan before converging on its France Square, the epicenter of the daily protests, early in the afternoon. Thousands of demonstrators then headed to the parliament compound where Pashinian answered questions from lawmakers.
Scores of riot police were deployed around the walled compound to keep the protesters from approaching the main entrance to the National Assembly. Heeding repeated appeals from opposition leaders, the crowd did not attempt to break through the police cordon during an hour-long standoff with the security forces.
Citing “credible information,” Armenia’s National Security Service (NSS) claimed earlier in the day that organizers of the protests are planning to seize the parliament. Opposition leaders shrugged off the claim.
“They are intimidating citizens with false claims so that citizens do not express their civic position,” one of them, Gegham Manukian, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Manukian and other deputies representing the opposition Hayastan and Pativ alliances went into the parliament building to attend the government’s question-and-answer session. In a statement read out on behalf of them, Hayastan’s Armen Rustamian reiterated the opposition demands for Pashinian’s resignation.
Rustamian charged that the prime minister mishandled peace talks with Azerbaijan and “brought war and defeat upon us” in 2020. He also accused Pashinian of breaking 2021 election campaign promises, including a pledge to assert the Karabakh Armenians’ right to self-determination.
Pashinian is now prepared to help Azerbaijan regain full control over Karabakh, Rustamian said, reiterating allegations that are at the heart of the ongoing opposition campaign to topple the government.
“Nikol Pashinian is not legitimate, does not have a mandate to lead our country to new concessions and must resign,” added the opposition leader.
Pashinian responded by again saying that Karabakh peace talks were botched by former President Serzh Sarkisian.
“It was Serzh Sarkisian who spoke about the war from this podium by saying that ‘we must no longer hope that Azerbaijan will not try to resolve the Karabakh problem through war,’” he said.
“If you think that you can justify the disasters brought by you upon this country by putting the blame on the former authorities, you are mistaken,” Rustamian shot back before he and other opposition deputies walked out in protest.
Some of those lawmakers chanted “Armenia without Nikol!” as they left the chamber. Their colleagues from the ruling Civil Contract party applauded them mockingly.
Ishkhan Saghatelian, another opposition leader who led the crowd outside the parliament building, said the protests will continue unabated.
“We will keep chasing him until he quits,” Saghatelian told the protesters after Pashinian left the heavily guarded building.