The leader of the Communist Party of Armenia (HKK) said little has changed in the country since last year’s “velvet revolution” as he led a traditional May Day demonstration in Yerevan on Wednesday.
The HKK was again the only Armenian political group that rallied supporters in the capital to mark the public holiday officially called Labor Day. Hundreds of them marched through the city center, waving red flags and holding big banners.
The crowd included not only elderly people nostalgic about the Soviet past, the HKK’s core support base, but also young Armenians and even schoolchildren. Some of them came from the country’s regions.
Radik Harutiunian, the head of the HKK chapter in the northeastern town of Martuni, said he tapped his modest pension to cover the travel expenses of local young Communists.
Harutiunian proudly sported a hammer-and-sickle insignia on his chest. “This symbol had given me free education, free healthcare and guaranteed employment,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian service.
“Our ideology is the most progressive in the world. Humanity has not managed to create anything better than that,” said Yerjanik Ghazarian, the HKK’s acting first secretary.
Ghazarian was unimpressed with last year’s mass protests that toppled the former Armenian government opposed by his party. He said it was mere “regime change,” rather than a revolution.
“The system has remained the same, only individuals [in government] have changed,” Ghazarian told reporters. He argued that just like its predecessors the current government opposes “socialism.”
Still, Ghazarian said his party stands ready to help Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian make Armenia’s relations with Russia “spotless.” Pashinian should get rid of his associates hostile to Moscow, added the HKK leader.
Pashinian congratulated Armenians on May Day in a written statement. He said his government is committed to protecting worker rights while carrying out an “economic revolution” promised by him.
The Communists were a major political force in Armenia in the 1990s, winning roughly 10 percent of the vote in various national elections. However, their influence has since declined significantly.
The HKK, which claims to have 20,000 members, has not been represented in the Armenian parliament since 2003. It won less than 1 percent of the vote in the April 2017 parliamentary elections and did not run in snap polls held in December 2018.
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