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Candidate for Armenia’s premiership vows to prevent vendetta against outgoing officials

Armenia’s parliament will vote to choose a new prime minister on Tuesday

Nikol Pashinyan Artiom Geodakyan/TASS

Nikol Pashinyan

© Artiom Geodakyan/TASS

YEREVAN, May 7. /TASS/. The candidate for Armenia’s premiership, Nikol Pashinyan, has vowed to prevent a vendetta against the outgoing officials if he is elected to chair the Cabinet of Ministers.

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"Let me say once again that there will be no vendetta against the previous authorities," he told the media on Monday.

Armenia’s National Assembly (parliament) will vote for a new prime minister on Tuesday, May 8. Earlier, the parliamentary faction of the Republican Party, which on May 1 blocked Pashinyan’s election, eventually agreed to support him.

On April 13, a string of mass protests began across Armenia. The demonstrators and their leader, Nikol Pashinyan, opposed the election of the country’s former president, Serzh Sargsyan, as prime minster. On April 23, Sargsyan agreed to step down. Deputy Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan was appointed acting head of the Cabinet. On May 1, the Armenian parliament turned down Pashinyan’s nomination for the prime minister’s post. After that he urged his supporters to resume large-scale civil disobedience demonstrations.

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