Kocharyan says power change still possible despite Pashinyan's win

By Siranush Adamyan

Former President Robert Kocharyan said a change of power remains possible in Armenia despite Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's victory in the June 7 parliamentary elections, in an interview published Friday evening, days after he was stripped of parliamentary immunity.

Kocharyan, who leads the opposition Armenia Alliance, told several outlets that political change could follow even a convincing election win if certain circumstances align.

He drew a parallel with 2017. The then-ruling Republican Party won that year's parliamentary vote, he noted, but a change of power came about nine months later. He also cited Tunisia, where President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was reelected with 90 percent of the vote before fleeing the country about a year later amid mass protests. Such an outcome is possible, Kocharyan said, but the situation has to develop.

On opposition unity — which Strong Armenia leader Samvel Karapetyan recently said he wants to channel into a post-election platform — Kocharyan said the opposition could have cooperated far more actively before the vote. He recalled that other forces had kept some distance from his bloc during the campaign, which he said was justified at the time. The effectiveness of any cooperation, he added, depends on a number of factors.

Kocharyan repeated his claim that the election was rigged. He estimated Civil Contract had actually won about 40 percent of the vote, not the official 49.7 percent, with the rest secured through fraud. He pointed to budget-funded vote-buying aimed at hundreds of thousands of pensioners, and to a discrepancy of roughly 30,000 between the number of ballots and signatures, which he said his team is checking against the voter lists. He sharply criticized Pashinyan's campaign as built on hatred and the threat of war, and made pointed personal remarks about the prime minister.

In the June 7 vote, Civil Contract took 49.7 percent and 64 seats, enough to form a government on its own. Strong Armenia came second with 29 seats, and Kocharyan's Armenia Alliance third with 9.9 percent and 12 seats. The alliance has said it will challenge the results in the Constitutional Court. 

In the interview, Kocharyan also addressed the criminal case being opened against him. On June 17, the Central Electoral Commission approved a request by prosecutors to lift his immunity and allow a criminal prosecution. As the top candidate on the Armenia Alliance list, he holds candidate immunity, so proceedings require the commission's consent. His lawyer, Aram Orbelyan, said the former president is expected to be charged with abuse of official authority and money laundering over a transaction approved by the government in 2004, during Kocharyan's presidency. 

Kocharyan called the case absurd and tied it to his planned departure from the country, saying it had been stitched together in two days. The only action attributed to him, he said, was his ratification of a government decision as president in 2004. Under the 1995 constitution, he argued, the president was obliged to ratify government decisions without any role in their content, and no procedure existed for refusing to do so. He said he and first President Levon Ter-Petrosyan had ratified all government decisions between 1995 and 2007.

Prosecutors link the case to Kocharyan through his son, Sedrak Kocharyan, who bought a stake in a company tied to the deal in 2008, after his father had left office, according to Orbelyan. The transaction concerns the site of the Master Klass tennis club. Kocharyan said there is no connection between his ratification and the later developments.

On June 14, Kocharyan was barred from leaving the country at Yerevan’s Zvartnots airport, and pro-government media reported that his ‘escape had been prevented’. He rejected that account, saying he travels abroad regularly, leaves Armenia several times a year, and had announced his three-day trip in advance. He also criticized the leaking of footage from the National Security Service as an intrusion into private life.