Panel Discussion: “Back to the Ballot Box: The June Elections in Armenia and the Stakes for Statehood”

BELMONT, MA — The National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) / Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Series on Contemporary Armenian Issues will present an online panel entitled “Back to the Ballot Box: The June Elections in Armenia and the Stakes for Statehood,” with Nerses Kopalyan, Harout Manougian, and Anna Ohanyan, on Saturday, May 22, 2021, at 1:00 pm (Eastern). The program will be accessible live on Zoom (registration required) and on NAASR’s YouTube Channel.

On April 25, 2021, Nikol Pashinyan formally tendered his resignation as Prime Minister and announced that he would seek re-election through an early parliamentary election. It was almost 3 years to the day after the dramatic resignation of Serge Sargsyan which catapulted Pashinyan to power in the culmination of the Velvet Revolution. In the wake of the catastrophic 44-day war of fall 2020 and mounting political tensions, much is at stake in the June 20 elections. This special panel discussion with three distinguished experts will analyze how we got here, what may lie ahead, and what it means for Armenian statehood.

The featured panelists will be Dr. Nerses Kopalyan, Assistant Professor-in-Residence of Political Science, University of Nevada, Las Vegas; Harout Manougian, elections expert currently based in Yerevan and a contributing writer for EVN Report; and Dr. Anna Ohanyan, Richard B. Finnegan Distinguished Professor of Political Science & International Relations at Stonehill College. Marc A. Mamigonian, Director of Academic Affairs, NAASR, will serve as moderator.

For more information contact NAASR at hq@naasr.org.