A year has passed since the snap parliamentary elections in Armenia. In an interview with Armenian News-NEWS.am, political technologist Armen Badalyan recapped the first year of the National Assembly and stated that even though there were many promises, the changes were cosmetic.

“It’s not like the parliament didn’t do anything, but it didn’t fulfill the promise it had made to engage investments after the snap parliamentary elections. No effort was made to have an independent judiciary. When the court dared to render decisions regarding the second President of Armenia that were undesired for the authorities, the Prime Minister called on blocking entrances to and exits from courts in order to take courts under control, and this was contrary to the promises that had been made. A certain crisis was created in the Constitutional Court and an attempt was made to change the composition of the Constitutional Court, but this was a failure,” he stated.

The political technologist also mentioned that the super prime-ministerial system remains, there is no economic revolution, and the promised amendments to the Electoral Code were not made. “The Prime Minister had promised to bring Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh Republic) to the negotiating table for a settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, but he didn’t. As far as foreign policy is concerned, he would talk about a balanced policy, but we see that Armenia’s foreign policy has turned into a pro-Putin policy.”

The political technologists also noted that the National Assembly doesn’t play a bigger role.