There are two months left until the elections in Armenia. As June 7 approaches, the election campaign is becoming intense; insults and derogatory statements are already flying between the government’s candidate for prime minister and the opposition candidates. In particular, the war criminal and former president Robert Kocharyan, who has been nominated for prime minister, has built his election campaign on insults and threats against his rival, Nikol Pashinyan.
He does not hesitate to state that he will remove Pashinyan from power, even by force if necessary. A number of political analysts believe that it is impossible to remove Pashinyan from power in the elections because his rating is higher than that of Kocharyan and Samvel Karapetyan. Knowing this, Kocharyan thinks he has no choice but to resort to his past criminal experiences, and he is indirectly hinting at this already. This is exactly what lies behind his claim that he will remove Pashinyan from power at any cost. It is not even excluded that the path of organizing terror against Pashinyan and physically eliminating him might be chosen. Those who put forward this claim remind us that Armenian terrorism has a bloody history of more than a hundred years, and that Armenian terror has even been applied against the Armenians themselves when necessary. For example, the terrorist act carried out in the Armenian parliament on October 27, 1999, is not a very distant history. During the parliamentary session, 6 armed individuals entered the hall and took 50 people, including deputies and ministers, hostage. As soon as they entered the hall, the terrorists first murdered Prime Minister Vazgen Sargsyan and Parliament Speaker Karen Demirchyan. In addition, during the terrorist act, Deputy Speakers Ruben Miroyan and Yuri Bakhshyan, deputies Armenak Armenakyan, Henrix Abramyan, Mikael Kotanyan, and the country’s Minister of Operational Affairs Leonard Petrosyan were also killed.
Although the then-president Robert Kocharyan declared a national day of mourning in the country, many experts claimed that he had a role in the terrorist act. This is because, as a result of the terrorist act in parliament, Vazgen Sargsyan and Karen Demirchyan, who posed a threat to Kocharyan’s power and were his most serious influential rivals, were killed. R. Kocharyan is still on the political scene today, and this time, not to protect his power, but to regain it, it is possible that with the support of his foreign masters, he wants to eliminate the main obstacle in his path—Pashinyan—through terror.
Political scientist Oqtay Qasımov stated in his commentary to Musavat-com regarding this matter that the propaganda carried out by Pashinyan’s team in Armenia, saying no to war, and the activities aimed at instilling in people’s minds the necessity of living with a real Armenia have preserved his influence. Practical steps towards establishing relations with Azerbaijan also strengthen Pashinyan’s positions:
“Pashinyan’s rivals, forces that treat him as an enemy, especially the criminal Karabakh clan, the Dashnaks, and circles in Russia, are watching this situation with concern. In order to restore and strengthen its lost influence in the South Caucasus, Russia is trying to participate in the elections in Armenia with all its might and, if possible, find ways to weaken Pashinyan or overthrow him from power. In this direction, they are working with their henchmen in Armenia, Robert Kocharyan. The past experience of Kocharyan and terrorists like him gives reason to say that the most serious threat to Nikol Pashinyan in the elections is the possibility of terror being committed against his life.”