Pashinyan calls for opening roads to prepare for rally in downtown Yerevan

PanARMENIAN.Net - Opposition leader Nikol Pashinyan urged demonstrators who have paralysed traffic across Armenia to open all the roads at 5:00pm Yerevan time and go to the Republic Square for a rally two hours later.

“We are waiting for developments every second, we always have other options,” Pashinyan said on Facebook Wednesday, May 2.

The campaign against the Armenian authorities is in full swing across Yerevan and the rest of the republic after the parliament failed to elect opposition leaderPashinyan as the country's new prime minister on Tuesday.

All the streets, as well as the metro, the road to the airport and the country’s railroad are currently blocked by groups of demonstrators.

Pashinyan, who has been leading the protests for several weeks now, needed more than half of all the votes - the support of 53 lawmakers - to secure the prime minister’s spot, but got only 45.

A second vote will be held on May 8, and the candidate needs to collect at least one third of the votes to win.

The founder and head of Civil Contract party and lawmaker from the Yelk bloc, Pashinyan leads a street campaign against the ruling authorities, which has seen thousands of Armenians taking to the streets in massive protests.

Former prime minister Serzh Sargsyan was forced to resign on April 23, and Pashinyan is now seeking the appointment as prime minister by the National Assembly of what he calls “the people’s candidate”, - i.e. himself - the formation of an interim government and snap parliamentary elections.

Pashinyan has promised to rid Armenia of corruption and poverty.