YEREVAN, MAY 8, ARMENPRESS. Domestic political developments in Armenia continue to remain in the focus of reputable international media outlets. The New York Times has referred to the election of Nikol Pashinyan to the post of Armenia’s Prime Minister on May 8.

ARMENPRESS reports the periodical underlines that on May 8 Nikol Pashinyan was elected Armenia’s Prime Minister with 59 votes in favor and 42 votes against.

After vowing to remake the country’s political and economic systems, Mr. Pashinyan told a cheering throng in the central Republic Square in Yerevan, the capital, that, “Your victory is not that I was elected as prime minister of Armenia; your victory is that you decided who should be prime minister of Armenia.”

The author reminds that on March 31, Mr. Pashinyan, 42, began a quixotic walk across central Armenia to protest an effort by the president to skirt term limits.

Few paid much attention at first. Yet within three weeks, Mr. Pashinyan, a former newspaper editor and political prisoner, had galvanized a civil disobedience movement that transformed the country’s political landscape. It forced the retirement of Serzh Sargsyan, the president for the past decade, and shoved aside the long-dominant Republican Party.

It was the most sweeping change in this small, landlocked country of about 2.8 million people in the southern Caucasus since it declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

The periodical also notes that Russian President Vladimir Putin was the first to congratulate Nikol Pashinyan after he assumed office, reminding that Russia attaches strategic importance to Armenia.

ENGLISH: Editor/Translator – Tigran Sirekanyan