Another Nikol Pashinyan marathon press conference: random thoughts

Vahe H Apelian

Snapshots of the PM Nikol Pashinyan's January 31,2025 Conference

I listened to the Prime Minister’s press conference. It surely takes stamina to confront reporters, especially Armenian reporters, for 4 hours 33 minutes and 56 seconds. Nikol Pashinyan seems to be endowed with such a stamina. He showed no sign of tiredness to the very end of the marathon press conference. Nikol Pashinyan seems to welcome such marathon press conferences.  

This press conference had the same arrangement.  The PM was seated at the desk with Mrs. Nazeli Baghdassarian, the PM’s press secretary. The PM first presented a summary of the government newest policies and invited the reporters to question him on the issues he presented or others as well that concern them. Afterwards Mrs. Nazeli explained that each reporter is given two minutes to frame one or two questions and that there will not be a follow-up questioning after the PM response to the questions they raised. She invited the reporters to respect the ruling.

 Subsequently she invited the reporters one by one. Each reporter first introduced itself and its affiliated news outlet and framed their concerns in a question or two. The reporters seemed to continue on remaining standing throughout the PM’s response. 

I do not recall how was the wording in the background during the previous press conferences. But during this last, January 31, 2025 conference, the wording for the Government of the Republic of Armenia was in three languages, naturally in Armenian, followed by English and Russian.

Obviously, the reporters asked all sorts of questions that naturally also had to do with Armenia’s relations with its neighbors and were not only confined to the laws and regulations that govern their day to day lives as citizens of Armenia.

I watched the conference in its entirety.  Much like Avo G Boghossian, who reported having watched the press conference, the following also came to my mind.

Surely the questions that were asked during the press conference, interest the global Armenians.  But a significant number of Armenians live in the Diaspora and do not know Armenian and therefore did not follow the press conference. That is a fact of our lives as the global nation we are. But the tremendous advances in technology will enable all interested Armenians to follow press conferences aided by their personal devices that will be translating the Armenian to many languages we speak nowadays.  Armenians have never been connected as we are nowadays. It is our era, lest we let it slip through our fingers.

During his meeting with the Swiss Armenian community representatives, the issue of Armenian literacy came about. Fewer Armenians nowadays speak Western Armenian than they did a few decades ago. However, the PM noted that there is also. a fairly large group of Armenians in Armenia, who are functionally illiterate in literate Armenian. Their knowledge of Armenian is confined to the mundane. The PM noted the government is engaged in a drive that will significantly change the Armenian school landscape in Armenia with schools being planned and constructed all over the country. 

Naturally, there will be a segment of the Armenians who will understand the PM well, but will perceive what the PM said according their engrained perception of the PM. I do not mean to say that they will deliberately distort what the PM said for political reasons, which, let us face it, although unethical, is an inherent part of any open, democratic society, surely in Armenia as well. But it is unusual when it trickles down to Diaspora and transcends opinion into hard core political stands.

The news of the PM’s conference will soon dominate the Armenian press. There will be commentaries. Most will react and regurgitate what they read having not heard the conference themselves to formulate their own opinons. That too is part of life. The reality is that the PM’s press conference and the grilling by reporters will not change much people's perceptions about the PM. Nikol Pashinyan up-ended the Armenian politics in 2018 with the popular revolt he led, the Velvet Revolution. For reasons we know well, perceptions and attitudes towards the PM are very much set by now, marathon press conference or not.

As to myself, I find Armenia a much better functioning state than it ever was. I find no reason to change my favorable perception of Armenia and its governance, after dutifully listening to the PM’s marathon conference. On the contrary, I find a government, led by a tireless PM who is hard at work to safeguard the Soviet Armenia’s territorial legacy to us, as the prosperous, secure, free, independent, democratic Armenia in the making, in peace with all its neighbors.