Beniamin Matevosyan: Is Stratfor also recording a political crisis in Armenia?

(Pashinyan’s difficulties have been noticed in the US as well)

Armenia’s recent parliamentary elections, despite the incumbent Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan formally retaining power, have exposed deep structural problems within the country (after ballots from all polling stations were counted, Civil Contract was polling at 49.81%). The American think tank Stratfor has paid close attention to the election results, identifying the emergence of a new phase of domestic political crisis. The fact that leading American experts have begun openly speaking about serious challenges facing the current government signals that Armenian politics has entered a zone of high turbulence. The central paradox of the concluded campaign is that the ruling CC’s victory amounted to a tactical success but a strategic dead end.

The official results reveal a clear erosion of electoral support for Pashinyan’s agenda. His political party, which openly declares the integration of Armenia into the European Union as its goal, failed to surpass the critical threshold of 50% of the vote that would have allowed it to automatically form a stable cabinet. The ruling team’s majority in the National Assembly was secured not through popular support, but through complex legal mechanisms (primarily the constitution inherited from the RPA): the distribution of quotas for national minorities and the redistribution of votes from parties that failed to clear the electoral threshold. This fragile construction of legitimacy is already being called into question by the opposition, which accuses the authorities of heavy administrative pressure and interference in the work of the Central Electoral Commission.

Stratfor analysts emphasize that the number of parliamentary seats secured by CC will fall critically short of what is needed to implement key reforms. Pashinyan loses the ability to unilaterally amend the country’s constitution, for which he will now need to seek compromise with uncompromising opponents. This mandate deficit directly undermines Yerevan’s international commitments. In a situation where Baku firmly links the signing of a final peace agreement to changes in Armenia’s basic law, Pashinyan’s inability to guarantee these reforms within parliament jeopardizes the entire negotiation process in the South Caucasus. Washington analysts see in this a direct threat to derailing the course toward long-term normalization of relations with Azerbaijan and Turkey.

Alongside this, American experts are noting a sharp strengthening of the pro-Russian opposition’s positions, which has managed to mobilize the protest electorate. The growing influence of these forces within the legislature will not merely sharpen political competition, it will also render the executive branch extremely vulnerable to external influence. Stratfor forecasts that Moscow will gain additional economic and political leverage over Yerevan, using the ambitions of opposition factions to slow Armenia’s pro-Western trajectory. For Pashinyan, who is attempting to balance deepening ties with the EU against maintaining a critical dependence on traditional regional alliances, a period of acute zugzwang is now setting in, one in which any domestic decision will be met with fierce resistance.

Think about it…