Azernews.Az

By Abdul Kerimkhanov

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s approval ratings have fallen from 45 to 25 according to an online polling, the Armenian media has reported.

Seems Pashinyan’s recent scandal with the security officials and his unsuccessful visit to the U.S. made the prime minister fall from grace in his country.

A number of political analysts have criticized Pashinyan's September visit to the U.S where he met the Armenian community in Los Angeles and delivered a controversial speech at the UN General Assembly's session.

Political scientist Hrant Melik-Shahnazaryan has said that Pashinayn’s U.S. visit was aimed at increasing the PM’s personal profile and authority.

Melik-Shahnazaryan noted that Pashinyan did not try to use the time spent in the U.S. to establish Armenian-American relations or relations with other countries. On the contrary, during the visit Pashinyan was exclusively engaged in the domestic political agenda.

"Pashinyan did not hold any meetings with the U.S. officials, nor with the leaders or delegations of other countries... No work was done in this direction. I believe that the purpose of the visit was to serve his personal interests," Melik-Shahnazaryan said.

Pashinyan has also come under fire for his controversial speech at the UN General Assembly in New York on September 25

Commenting on the speech, Armen Ashotyan, Deputy Chairman of the Armenian Republican Party, stated that it is better not to let Pashinyan approach the UN rostrum.

Ashotyan said that Pashinyan’s primitive move to delay the negotiation process will not work and will put Armenians in danger by destroying the old negotiating conjuncture and creating greater risks instead. "Neither Baku nor the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs will believe this idle delusion," Ashotyan noted.

In his speech at UN General Assembly, Pashinyan made a number of controversial statements that showed his lack of expertise of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

He claimed that in the 1980s, Nagorno-Karabakh region had the right to secede from Azerbaijan just the way Azerbaijan had the right to secede from the Soviet Union, adding that return of Karabahk to Azerbaijan would be similar to the restoration of the Soviet Union.

Pashinyan was hoping to win the sympathy of the Western public by drawing such ridiculous parallel.

However, if Pashinyan bothered to get acquainted with the documents of the Soviet era that he refers to, he would have discovered that autonomies regions had no rights to secession from the USSR under the law. According to the Soviet Constitution, autonomous republics could be self-determined only with the consent of the central republican authorities.

From the UN rostrum, Armenian PM accused Azerbaijan of "aggression", desire for revenge, and the "one-sided" stance in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. " Pashinyan repeated his proposal about accepting a solution to the conflict for all "three" parties, including illegal regime created in occupied Nagorno-Karabakh.

Pashinyan is very inconsistent in his statements. Just a month before delivering his speech as the UN, Pashinyan gave another speech, this time in Azerbaijan’s occupied Khankandi city, where he called for the unification of Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia. Pashinyan’s speech completely disrupted negotiations process between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Many experts even stated that the speech brought an and to the two-decade negotiations process.

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Abdul Kerimkhanov is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AbdulKerim94

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