Serzh Sargsyan

Serzh Sargsyan (2010)

Serzh Asati Sargsyan ( Armenian Սերժ Ազատի Սարգսյան Sersch Asati Sargsjan , English Serzh Sargsyan , in scientific transliteration Serž Azati Sargsyan ; born June 30, 1954 in Stepanakert , Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast , Azerbaijani SSR , Soviet Union ) is an Armenian politician ( Republican Party ), was President of Armenia from 2008 to 2018 and Prime Minister of Armenia from April 17 to 23, 2018 .

Professional career

Sargsyan studied from 1970 to 1979 at the philological faculty of the State University of Yerevan , interrupted from military service from 1972 to 1974. He then worked as a functionary of the CPSU and the Komsomol youth organization in his native Stepanakert and in Nagorno-Karabakh . Sargsyan campaigned for the independence of Nagorno-Karabakh from the Azerbaijani SSR, was head of the self-defense forces of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic from 1989 to 1993 and also a member of the National Assembly of Armenia from 1990 to 1993 . Since 2004 he has been president of the Armenian Chess Federation .

In connection with the murder of Azerbaijani civilians in the Khodjali massacre during the Nagorno-Karabakh War on February 26, 1992, the then head of the Karabakh Armenian Self-Defense Forces Sargsyan said in an interview with the British journalist and Caucasus researcher Thomas de Waal : “Until Khodjali, Azerbaijanis thought that the Armenians would not raise their hand against the civilian population. We were able to break this stereotype. "

From 1993 to 2007, Sargsyan was Defense Minister of Armenia (the official title changed). Between March 2007 and April 2008 he held the office of Prime Minister. In February 2008, he won the presidential elections and succeeded President Robert Kocharyan , whose preferred candidate was Sargsyan. Although the OSCE - election observers described the ballot as largely fair, the candidate called Levon Ter-Petrosyan after the election to demonstrations and called for a cancellation of his opinion fraudulent election. On March 1, 2008, a mass demonstration for these demands was violently broken up. Eight demonstrators were killed.

He was confirmed in office in the Armenian presidential election on February 18, 2013. According to the evaluation by the delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe , the election was decided by the artificially increased turnout. It was reportedly characterized by the improper use of administrative resources, buying votes, intimidating voters and manipulating the counting of votes.

On October 10, 2014, in Minsk , he signed an agreement for Armenia to join the Eurasian Economic Union . As a result, there were several demonstrations against Sargsyan, in which more than 10,000 people took part.

→ Main article : Revolution in Armenia 2018

Mass protest against Sargsyan in Yerevan on the day before his resignation as prime minister after a five-day term (April 22, 2018)

After Sargsyan was unable to run again in the 2018 presidential election after two terms in office , Armen Sargsyan was elected as his successor. Zargsyan became Prime Minister on April 17, 2018 with significantly greater powers than his predecessor Karen Karapetjan , as this office was greatly enhanced in 2015 by a constitutional reform in which the previous semi-presidential system was changed to a parliamentary system. This gives parliament greater powers, while the head of state's power is reduced to largely representative functions. In April 2014, Serzh Sargsyan promised at a meeting with the members of the special commission on the impending constitutional changes that he would no longer run for the office of president and that he would not be prime minister. After he took office as prime minister, mass protests broke out in the capital Yerevan and in other cities in the country in April 2018 , in which around 50,000 demonstrators took part. The protesters accused him of being responsible for corruption and nepotism in Armenia , among other things . On April 23, 2018, he bowed to the protests and submitted his resignation from the post of Prime Minister.

At the beginning of December 2019, the special investigation authority of Armenia brought charges against Sargsyan for misappropriation and misappropriation of state funds. He is accused of having passed government contracts to government-related entrepreneurs as part of a subsidy program launched in 2013 for Armenian farmers and embezzling a sum of 490 million Dram (approx. 920 thousand euros). Sargsyan himself described the allegations against him as "political persecution".

Private

Sargsjan has been married to the music teacher Rita Aleksandri Sargsjan (born March 6, 1962) since 1983 and has two daughters, Anusch and Satenik (born August 17, 1986). In addition to his native Armenian , Sargsyan speaks fluent Russian . In addition, he has a good knowledge of Turkish and Azerbaijani and understands rudimentary English .

Web links

Commons : Serzh Sargsyan  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ^ Association history ( memento from July 17, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) on the website of the Armenian Chess Association, 2013, accessed on August 1, 2016 (English).
2. ↑ Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: Интервью Томаса де Ваала с Сержем Саргсяном, министром обороны Армении (ныне Арменид). December 15, 2000; Retrieved January 23, 2018 (Russian). 
3. ^ Allegation of election fraud: Zarkissyan is the new President of Armenia . N24.de , February 20, 2008, accessed August 1, 2016.
4. ↑ В Ереване полиция разогнала митинг оппозиции . NEWSru.com , March 1, 2008, accessed August 1, 2016 (Russian).
5. ↑ Ashot Manutscharjan: The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict from an Armenian point of view . In: Erich Reiter (ed.): The war for Nagorno-Karabakh (=  series of publications on international politics . Volume 2 ). Böhlau Verlag, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2009, ISBN 978-3-205-78404-3 , p. 67 f .
6. ↑ Armenia has voted: Zarkissyan remains president . In: n-tv . February 19, 2013, accessed August 1, 2016.
7. ^ German Bundestag, 18. Election period, printed matter 18/7129, briefing by the delegation of the Federal Republic of Germany to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe from April 22 to 26, 2013 in Strasbourg. December 18, 2015, Berlin.
8. ^ Armenia joins the Eurasian Economic Union . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . October 10, 2014, accessed August 1, 2016.
9. ↑ Armenians protest against economic union . ( Memento from October 25, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) In: Frankfurter Rundschau . October 10, 2014, accessed August 1, 2016.
   Armenia: Protests against President Zarkissyan. In: Deutschlandfunk . October 25, 2014, archived from the original on October 25, 2014 ; accessed on August 1, 2016 . 
10. ↑ Serzh Sargsyan Promises Never to Run for President Again | Epress.am . In: Epress.am . April 10, 2014 ( epress.am [accessed April 24, 2018]).
11. ↑ 50,000 demonstrators: arrests during protest in Armenia . ( zdf.de [accessed on April 23, 2018]).
12. ^ Stuttgarter Zeitung, Stuttgart, Germany: After mass protest: Armenia's Prime Minister Sargsjan resigns . In: stuttgarter-zeitung.de . April 23, 2018 ( archive.org ). After mass protest: Armenia's Prime Minister Sargsyan resigns ( Memento from April 24, 2018 in the Internet Archive )
13. ↑ Andrew Roth: Serzh Sargsyan resigns as Armenia's prime minister after protests. April 23, 2018, accessed April 23, 2018 . 
14. ^ After mass protests in Yerevan: Armenia's Prime Minister resigns . In: Spiegel Online . April 23, 2018 ( spiegel.de [accessed April 23, 2018]).
15. ↑ Foreign Office on the Situation in Armenia . In: Foreign Office DE . ( Auswaertiges-amt.de [accessed on April 25, 2018]).
16. ↑ Саргсян Серж Азатович. Уголовное преследование. In: Кавказский узел. December 5, 2019, accessed December 12, 2019 (Russian).