YEREVAN (Azatutyun.am) — Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on Thursday, October 29, threatened to generate “strong public pressure” on Armenia’s two main opposition groups and bar them from possible snap parliamentary elections if they continue to reject his draft of a new Armenia constitution demanded by Azerbaijan.
“If the opposition decides to vote against it, a political process will ensue,” Pashinyan told reporters. “Something quite unusual will happen. Typically, it’s the opposition that holds protests in front of parliament. But this time, it might be the authorities who hold a protest.”
“If this scenario also fails, we will head to snap elections on the condition that there is a 100 percent guarantee that the current parliamentary opposition will not be in the next parliament,” he said.
The draft constitution needs to be backed by at least two-third of the Armenian parliament’s deputies before it can be put on a referendum. The opposition Strong Armenia and Hayastan alliances represented in the National Assembly have repeatedly said that none of their deputies will vote for the still unpublicized document which they believe is imposed on Armenia by Baku.
Their representatives did not immediately react to Pashinyan’s latest threats. A senior Strong Armenia lawmaker, Aram Vartevanian, insisted instead that Baku would hardly sign a peace treaty with Yerevan even if Pashinyan were to succeed in enacting the new constitution.
