Today is the final date of the ultimatum, delivered to the Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan by the opposition, have expired, demanding his resignation. So far, the opposition has failed to bring a critical mass of people to the streets. The very definition of "Armenian opposition" is conditional, since in the entire recent history of local parliamentarism, influential parliamentary parties in Armenia have most often been oligarchic unions without any intelligible working program, slogan, or even party charter.
The current street riots in the streets of Yerevan are represented, first of all, by activists from among informal political associations, filled with revanchist sentiments, who were ready to support the current Armenian government a year ago.
It took “Patriots” from the streets of Yerevan just a couple of weeks to find a worthy, in their opinion, replacement for Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. It was the 74-year-old former first prime minister of sovereign Armenia, former defense minister of the republic Vazgen Manukyan. The logic of the opposition's recommendation is extremely transparent: Manukyan was in the ranks of the separatists in 1988, a participant in the first Karabakh war, provided the "defense" of the republic's southern borders, which means that he has experience in strategic planning behind him. Manukyan does not feel nostalgia for Armenia's Soviet past, is conservative on issues of Armenian nationalism, but is not noticed in discrediting ties with the Karabakh clan. Manukyan, like the first president of independent Armenia, Levon Ter-Petrosyan, was lucky to stay alive and not emigrate from the republic during the era of the rule of the Karabakh presidents. Not a "Pashinyan member" or a member of a clan, an implacable politician who stood at the origins of the third republic, ready to go to the end, regardless of his venerable age. In other words, Manukyan is in line with the ideals of post-Soviet Armenia, despite the fact that for the past twenty years his name and political weight have been at the margins of Armenian politics.
Against the background of the political spectacle, which has been unfolding on the streets of the Armenian capital for several weeks, an extremely unfavorable trend for the republic can be traced. Armenia is systematically introduced into a state of social hysteria with the aim of undermining the stability of the agreements reached through its image policy. The so-called oppositionists are not interested in the subject and possibilities of the agreement reached between Yerevan, Moscow and Baku, they are not worried about the consequences and losses as a result of the second Karabakh war. "Armenia lost to Azerbaijan, and therefore to Turkey through the fault of Nikol Pashinyan" - this is what really worries the Armenian "patriots" who rage every day under the windows of government buildings. According to activists, this problem can be solved by someone who has already "won" Azerbaijan.
The peculiarity of the current political strategist lies in the desire to replace the insecure Pashinyan with the more venerable and aged Manukyan, who will certainly be able to defend the interests of the separatists in the negotiations. The expectation that Pashinyan will be able to repeat the "success" of the former presidents of Armenia Robert Kocharian and Serzh Sargsyan in imitating the negotiation process on Karabakh has failed. Now the separatists are faced with the task of retaining the remaining, so to speak, legacy of the first Karabakh war and preventing the loss of the exclusively Armenian appearance of Karabakh. Otherwise, it will inevitably lead to a change in Armenia's foreign policy orientation.
The revival of Manukyan's image in this sense is an attempt to preserve the pro-Russian orientation of the Armenian political elite. Logically, Manukyan should eliminate the atmosphere of hatred within Armenia and stabilize the post-war situation. However, skeptics note the high probability of a social split within the republic, which could develop into a civil confrontation. The corridor for the ascent to the heights of the Armenian power is extremely narrow for Manukyan, since the government, although it is ready to take responsibility for the failure in Karabakh, is in no hurry to leave the political Olympus.
