One deputy defected while another was expelled from the parliamentary faction of Serzh Sarkisian’s Republican Party of Armenia (HHK) on Tuesday, reducing its majority in the National Assembly to only three seats.
One of them, Shirak Torosian, broke ranks to vote for opposition leader Nikol Pashinian during the May 8 election of the country’s new prime minister, as did another HHK parliamentarian, Felix Tsolakian.
The HHK leadership had ordered 11 other members of its 58-strong faction to back Pashinian’s candidacy under pressure from tens of thousands of people demonstrating in Yerevan. It condemned Torosian and Tsolakian for defying that decision.
Consequently, the HHK faction decided to oust Torosian from its ranks on Tuesday. It issued a statement to that effect shortly after the lawmaker announced that he himself is quitting the parliament majority.
In a Facebook post, Torosian, who was never formally affiliated with the former ruling party, cited the “incompatibility” of his and the HHK’s views on ongoing “political processes” in Armenia. He also indicated that another party, of which he is a member, supports fresh parliamentary elections sought by Pashinian but opposed by the HHK.
The party called Hzor Hayrenik (Powerful Fatherland) mainly unites natives of Georgia’s Javakheti region mostly populated by ethnic Armenians. Torosian was also born and raised in the region bordering northwestern Armenia.
The other parliamentarian, Artur Gevorgian, said he has decided to leave the HHK and terminate his membership in the party altogether. “I don’t want to see a struggle between a political force making up the [parliamentary] majority and the [Pashinian-led] popular movement,” he wrote on Facebook. “It is unnecessary and extremely dangerous.”
Gevorgian, who is a former boxer and boxing coach, also signaled support the idea of snap elections. But he said they alone cannot solve the “existing political crisis.”
Incidentally, Gevorgian is the son-in-law of Vladimir Gasparian, the former chief of the Armenian police. Pashinian fired Gasparian two days after taking office. But he stopped short of publicly criticizing the police general’s track record.
The HHK held 58 seats in the 105-member parliament until the Pashinian-led protest movement forced Sarkisian to resign as prime minister on April 23. The formal and de facto defections mean that it now technically controls 55 parliament seats, just enough to block the new government’s bills and other initiatives.