Pashinyan, the defeated winner

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan during the June election campaign. There is little doubt that Pashinyan used the art of rhetoric brilliantly, particularly during the last election campaign. Photo: Gevorg Simonyan / Shutterstock

Pashinyan’s re-election was facilitated by both the socio-cultural characteristics of contemporary Armenia and a weak opposition.

But the great electoral performance of the Armenian prime minister can only be fully understood if we focus on his skilful use of populist rhetoric. Pashinyan masterfully succeeded in shifting the political discourse away from the genuine security threat Armenia currently faces to a fight against the old regime’s comeback.

Unexpected shock

Usually an inability to implement a political programme and growing distrust towards the ruling parties or simple scandals are enough to prevent a sitting government from getting re-elected. In other words, governments that lose wars do not get re-elected. Nikol Pashinyan, however, shows us that this is not always the case. Pashinyan won early elections in June 2021 despite the fact he was leading the country when Armenia lost the six-week war with Azerbaijan last autumn. With his election victory, Pashinyan falsified the belief that losing Nagorno-Karabakh (NK) would mean losing power. 

Moreover, the defeat in the war has forced the Armenian government to accept extremely harsh conditions that do not have the merit to guarantee the nation’s security. For months after the Russian-brokered ceasefire was signed, Azerbaijani troops continue to attempt incursions on the country’s border in the regions of Syunik, Gegharkunik and Ararat. However, the current instability has not undermined Pashinyan’s ability to remain in power.

There are at least three main reasons that have allowed Pashinyan to stay in power after the war. First, the Armenian public did not expect a large-scale war. The history of the conflict shows that the balance of power between Armenia and Azerbaijan was sufficient to curb further escalation of the conflict. Moreover, Russia’s active presence in the region has always been a further guarantee of stability or, at least, the absence of escalation. Even the skirmishes in the summer of 2020, which were later considered as a dress rehearsal of the war, did not seem to prelude a full-scale battle. 

Second, the Armenian public was confident since the country for many years enjoyed a sort of regional superiority due to the competitiveness of the Armenian army. The unpreparedness of Armenians in the face of last autumn’s conflict was absolute, both politically and psychologically. This misperception was exacerbated by government-imposed information filtering. The government’s call to follow official media and distrust international information resulted in a total lack of understanding of what was happening on the ground during the six weeks of war. Against this background, the high legitimacy of Pashinyan left no space for the public to question the way in which the executive was handling the war. In particular, Armenians were bewitched by the slogan “We will win”, which the government put forward and could foresee everything happening but a defeat.

In light of the above, the shock of defeat was massive and Armenians became paralysed – only a small number of citizens mobilised to demand the resignation of Pashinyan after the ceasefire was agreed with the November 9th statement. And the election turnout was very low, with just under half of Armenians (49.37 per cent) going to the polls for the June elections. This is the second-worst turnout ever, taking into account all presidential, parliamentary and referendum elections held since 1991. In other words, the inaction of the majority of citizens ensured Pashinyan’s stay in power. 

The absence of credible alternatives 

Another decisive element which allowed Pashinyan’s party Civil Contract to win 53.9 per cent of the vote, with peaks of 67 per cent in the countryside, was the presence of a weak opposition. In the June elections, all other party leaders ran in an attempt to challenge Pashinyan. The alternatives to Pashinyan had nothing new to offer. In addition, excessive polarisation within the opposition camp, as well as a rhetorically-violent election campaign favoured Pashinyan. As a consequence, more than 20 parties did not even pass the five per cent threshold during the elections.

A good example of the electoral failure of the opposition is Levon Ter-Petrosyan, the first president of Armenia (1991-1998), who did not even receive two per cent of the vote. Although his candidacy was solid, the image of a “weak” candidate developed over time. During his tenure he suggested improving relations with neighbouring countries, which might lead to economic development of the region. In particular, Ter-Petrosyan proposed to put aside demands for recognition of the genocide by Turkey and to hand over the seven regions conquered during the war with Azerbaijan in the 1990s without demanding immediate recognition of Nagorno-Karabakh’s status.

Ter-Petrosyan’s vision, explained in his famous 1997 article “War or Peace? Time for Reflection”, suggested that Azerbaijan would become stronger and the international community would never accept the self-determination of Nagorno-Karabakh. In light of this, defeat was just a matter of time and an internationally-recognised solution was impossible to reach. Although Ter-Petrosyan’s ideas proved to be correct, they were received negatively in Armenia and he was forced to resign. In the June elections, he once again was punished for his original approach. His proposal for the opposition leaders to run together against Pashinyan was also rejected.

Among those who rejected the Ter-Petrosyan proposal was Robert Kocharyan, the second Armenian President (1998-2008). Although he was Pashinyan’s main rival, he ended up with just 21 per cent of the vote. The disagreement between Ter-Petrosyan and Kocharyan is rooted in their ideological differences over Nagorno-Karabakh. Kocharyan would never have accepted the cession of the seven regions unless in exchange for the recognition of Nagorno-Karabakh’s status. Many have linked this to Kocharyan’s emotional ties to Nagorno-Karabakh, the land where he was born and raised, and for which he fought in the war during the 1990s.

No return to the past

Despite being an independent candidate, Kocharyan was, and still is, supported by the Armenian Revolutionary Party (ARP). Although the initial slogan of the ARP was “A Free and Unified Armenia”, today the party limits its demands to the independence of Artsakh (the Armenian name for Nagorno-Karabakh). In the elections Kocharyan, together with the governors of the Syunik region, formed the Armenia Bloc, which includes the ARP.

His decision to replicate the same old political strategy and play the role of a strong man did not produce the desired outcome. Moreover, Kocharyan was penalised for his bad reputation. Indeed, Armenians did not seem to have forgotten the two tragic events that occurred during his presidency: the assassination of Prime Minister Vazgen Sargsyan in 1999 and the crackdown on civil disobedience in March 2008. At that time, opposition leader Ter-Petrosyan and former journalist and up-and-coming politician Pashinyan led mass protests to contest the electoral triumph of Serzh Sargsyan, the third president (2008-2018). As a result of the police clashes, ten people were killed and Pashinyan was sentenced to imprisonment for civil disobedience. As soon as Pashinyan came to power in 2018, a trial against Kocharyan, seen as a vendetta, was initiated. Although the allegations of “overthrowing the constitutional order” and, more specifically, orchestrating the clashes between the police and citizens, were dismissed for lack of evidence, the trial contributed to bringing Kocharyan back into the political arena. Today, another trial is underway against him for corruption. This certainly affected his image during the recent campaign.

The electoral performance of Serzh Sargsyan was also poor. He was hindered by the fact that his mandate was punctuated by allegations of corruption. The Armenian oligarchs were strongly reinforced when Sargsyan was in power. Leader of the nationalist Republican Party of Armenia, he founded the political coalition “I Have Honour” with a former intelligence chief appointed by Pashinyan who later switched sides. Sargsyan’s bloc received 5.3 per cent of the votes. Notably, Sargsyan was the “loser” of the 2018 revolution and thus represents the past – a past already defeated by Pashinyan three years ago. This is why he could not be a credible alternative to the incumbent prime minister.

Pashinyan: popular or populist?

There is no doubt that Pashinyan was able to emotionally connect with a section of Armenian society. Similarly, there is little doubt that he used the art of rhetoric brilliantly, particularly during the last election campaign. Pashinyan was able to instil into the people’s minds that he was one of them. Armenians, deprived of any ability to influence the destiny of their country for many years, finally felt like they have a leader who is an ordinary person like them, at least in appearance. This feature has accompanied Pahinyan throughout his political career to the extent that, during the revolution, people called him by his first name, Nikol, rather than his surname.

The repetitive use of expressions – “you are all prime ministers”, “you decide your own future”, “it’s all the previous regime’s fault” – has enabled Pashinyan to win the hearts and minds of the Armenian public, especially in rural areas. The formula of “I am proud of you, I bow to you, I kiss you” to close his rallies and speeches helped create an emotional bond with the people. At the same time, Pashinyan’s use of humour and insults disguised as ironic gags allowed him to break down any barriers with the voters.

While these tactics certainly helped, his real achievement was to make Armenians forget about the war, at least for the duration of the electoral campaign. In other words, in shifting the political discourse from the external front (i.e. security issues) to the internal front (i.e. the risk of the old regime returning to power), Pashinyan managed to win an election that seemed lost.

Tiziano Marino is a political analyst and researcher specialising in international security and geoeconomics. He is a graduate of the College of Europe in Natolin and Roma Tre University. His research interests include the EU Neighbourhood, South Caucasus and South Asia.

Tatevik Hovhannisyan is a political scientist specialising in political communications and civil society affairs. She is a graduate of the College of Europe in Natolin and Yerevan State University. Her areas of interest include EU-Neighbourhood relations, civic participation in developing countries and advocacy.

Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh war, Nikol Pashinyan