A sea of people on Republic Square who gathered from the early morning hours anticipating Nikol Pashinyan’s election as prime minister. Parliament failed to come through
YEREVAN—Nikol Pashinyan, the leader of the popular movement that for almost three weeks has been demanding change called for a general strike on Wednesday and vowed to continue protests across Armenia, after the National Assembly on Tuesday failed to elect him as prime minister.
After the parliament session, which lasted about nine hours on Tuesday, Pashinyan headed to Yerevan’s Republic Square where he told a sea of thousands of supporters, who had gathered there since as early as 8 a.m. local time, and urged them to continue the peaceful protests that have been sweeping the country and resulted in the resignation of former prime minister Serzh Sarkisian last week prompting Tuesday’s extraordinary session to elect a new prime minister.
“Our counter-move against the action of the Republican faction will be very rapid. Tomorrow we will declare a general strike. We will block all the streets, communications, subways, train stations and the airports beginning at 8:15 in the morning,â€
