The Region in Brief

I bet, Pashinyan himself has concocted this outrageous coup d’état allegation by Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan against himself, in order to silence anyone who opposes him and who he sees as a threat, taking a leaf straight out of Erdogan’s playbook. That a single person, the Armenian Apostolic Church, opposition political parties or NGOs could launch a coup d’état, is laughable and absurd in the extreme. Only militaries, paramilitaries or ruling leaders themselves can launch a coup d’état – those who control the levers of power and have access to weapons. Do the Armenian Apostolic Church, opposition political parties or NGOs have military divisions at their disposal?! It just shows how paranoid and unhinged Pashinyan has become. That Catholicos Karekin II could be Pashinyan’s next and prime target, is very much possible, since he sees him as the biggest threat to his rule. Pashinyan may well be concocting a plot to arrest, charge and convict Karekin as the “chief instigator” of his concocted coup d’état allegation, in order to purge the Armenian Apostolic Church and to fully control it, as well as to destroy opposition political parties and NGOs, and imprison anyone he sees as a threat.

Let’s not kid ourselves. The tell signs of Pashinyan’s creeping authoritarianism were there, initially beneath the surface, but which steadily became more apparent, the more he amassed power and planted his supporters in the bureaucracy and in all state institutions, including the judiciary. Now that he controls all the institutions of the state, including the judiciary, which he uses as a weapon to silence and intimidate the opposition, his authoritarianism is out all in the open. His “democratic credentials” turned out to be a farce and were a ruse, in order to come to power, which was his main goal after all, exactly emulating Erdogan. Pashinyan is an autocrat and a dictator.