Armenian Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan resigned on Monday after ten days of opposition protests. "The situation could be solved in various ways, but I will not resort to any of them. That is not mine. I leave the post of the head of this country," Sargsyan was quoted as saying by his press office.
Mass protests in Yerevan have been on the rise over the past ten days, but their ground was prepared long ago.
Without going into the post-Soviet history of Armenia, I would like to identify some landmark points. These are, in particular, the events of 2008, when the presidential election resulted in Sargsyan’s coming to power to succeed the country’s second president, Robert Kocharyan. The opposition did not recognize the elections’ results back then, and there were good reasons for that. According to official data, ten people were killed and about 200 injured during the clashes in the early hours of March 1, 2008.
This left a serious imprint on the entire subsequent rule of Serzh Sargsyan, who was at the helm of the nation for two consecutive terms. Although he won elections twice, each time his opponents challenged their results to some extent.
The full version of this article will be published on Tuesday, April 24.