The Armenian ministers of defense, finance and foreign affairs as well as eight other members of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s cabinet have been formally reappointed to their posts.
President Armen Sarkissian signed relevant decrees on Saturday more than one month after Pashinian’s My Step bloc swept to a landslide victory in parliamentary elections that completed last spring’s “velvet revolution” in Armenia.
In another decree, Sarkissian appointed Zaruhi Batoyan as minister of labor and social affairs. She has served as a deputy minister in the same agency until now.
Batoyan, 39, is the first new minister in Pashinian’s post-election cabinet. She is also its sole female member so far.
Armenia - Zaruhi Batoyan, the newly appointed minister of labor and social affairs.
The cabinet members who have kept their jobs also include senior My Step figures such as Education Minister Arayik Harutiunian and Local Government Minister Suren Papikian as well as Justice Minister Artak Zeynalian. The latter is a leading member of a pro-Western bloc that challenged My Step in the December 9 elections.
The reappointed Defense Minister Davit Tonoyan, Finance Minister Atom Janjughazian and Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanian are technocrats not affiliated with any party or bloc.
Two of Armenia’s three deputy prime minister, Tigran Avinian and Mher Grigorian, were reappointed last Wednesday.
Pashinian indicated on Thursday he has still not made a final decision on the structure of his government. He said he will therefore name only two-thirds of his ministers for the time being.
In a live Facebook address aired the following day, the premier reaffirmed his intention to reduce the number of government ministries, saying that will make the executive branch more efficient and less susceptible to corruption. He specifically defended the widely anticipated closure of the Diaspora Ministry and the Culture Ministry’s merger with the Education Ministry.
Ever since he came to power in May Pashinian has repeatedly pledged to downsize the state bureaucracy, saying that it is bloated and inefficient.
A tentative government bill circulated last month calls for reducing the number of ministries from 17 to 12. It sparked street protests in December by hundreds of Diaspora and culture ministry employees fearing a loss of their jobs.
Some public administration experts question the wisdom of having fewer government ministries. They say that the new “super ministries” would only slow down the work of the state apparatus.
Armenia - Bright Armenia party leader Edmon Marukian speaks at an election campaign rally in Masis, November 28, 2018.
Also, some opposition groups, notably the Bright Armenia Party (LHK), have criticized Pashinian’s apparent reluctance to curtail his sweeping executive powers inherited from the country’s former leaders. The controversial bill would keep Armenia’s police, National Security Service (NSS) and tax and customs services accountable to the prime minister, rather than his cabinet or the parliament.
These agencies were directly controlled by the presidents of the republic under the previous, presidential system of government. Former President Serzh Sarkisian made sure that they will be subordinate to the prime minister when he enacted controversial constitutional changes that turned Armenia into a parliamentary republic.
Sarkisian planned to stay in power as prime minister after serving out his second presidential term in April 2018. Pashinian, Edmon Marukian and other leaders of the now defunct Yelk alliance accused him of introducing a “super prime-ministerial” system of government with the aim of maintaining a tight grip on power.
Marukian, who leads the LHK, again demanded last week that the police, the NSS and the State Revenue Committee (SRC) be turned into ministries. “Public attention is focused on the Diaspora and culture ministries but the key thing here is the police, the NSS and the tax collection body, which must be placed under a parliamentary oversight,” he told reporters.