Pashinyan hails positive migration trends after 'Velvet Revolution' in Armenia

Acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan praised the positive trends in Armenia's past months’ migration dynamics as he met with the Armenians of Kazakhstan as part of his official visit to the country.

The premier highlighted particularly the enhanced business atmosphere and the investment-friendly climate created after the “Velvet Revolution”.

He cited the most recent official statistics revealing a positive balance in the total migration records (13,000) from May until October, the official website of the prime minister reports.

“I am hopeful that the 13,000 will increase to 130,000, 200,000, 1,300,000 in the period of our [government’s] tenure - to allow us to see a state of a completely new level. We want Armenia’s guiding slogan to be ‘A Happy Individual, A Caretaking Society, and A Powerful State’. I know that by uniting our efforts, we will eventually realize that goal,” Pashinyan said, addressing the attendees.

The acting premier left for Kazakhstan on Thursday to take part in the Collective Security Treaty Organization’s (CSTO) key summit expected to elect the intergovernmental military bloc’s top leader. The Organization’s former secretary general, Yuri Khachaturov, was sacked and recalled to Armenia recently after being accused of overthrowing the country’s constitutional order in the 2008 post-election events.  Valery Semerikov will for now remain the CSTO’s acting secretary general as the member states’ high-ranking representatives decided Thursday to postpone the final decision until December 6.

Elaborating on his government’s vision of “New Armenia”, Pashinyan expressed a stong confidence that democracy is from now on irreversible in the country. “There is no dictatorship in the Republic of Armenia any longer. Never before was the press so free in Armenia as it is today. What matters most importantly is the change in the people’s perception of their own role, and the mutual attitude. The greatest impression foreigners get in our country today is actually from the people. They all say they have a feeling as though Armenia is one single family. That’s the most important change. We are a democratic country and hence, no other scenario is absolutely possible. The people staged this revolution against authoritarianism and the oligarchic regime, so they will never ever allow the creation of such a system any more in the future. What destroyed our political system most of all was the kind of bogus opposition which, to my mind, came into being after 1988. We are not going to follow that track. Armenia, for a long time, did not have a government enjoying a popular mandate; neither did we have an opposition as such. And this is exactly why people never trusted anyone in Armenia. We are not going to create an artificial opposition, so to speak; the opposition is obliged to create its own self. The people themselves are to decide - in the upcoming [snap] parliamentary election – who will be the representatives of our government and opposition,” Pashinyan added.