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| - Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan was celebrated as a national hero when he swept to power in a peaceful revolution in 2018, but now he is fighting for political survival. Pashinyan, 46, has come under immense pressure to resign since November, when he signed a ceasefire agreement with Azerbaijan that ended six weeks of fighting for control of the mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh region. The reformer now faces a key test in snap parliamentary polls Sunday, a vote he himself called to extinguish a political crisis that engulfed the nation after he signed the controversial truce. November's agreement saw Armenia cede swathes of territories it had controlled for decades and was seen as national humiliation. The president and top military commanders demanded that Pashinyan step down, and people turned out in protracted street protests. He called the polls in March to buttress his embattled rule, which he claimed had survived a coup attempt when an army chief called for him to resign. "The people must decide whether I must stay or go," Pashinyan told crowds of supporters one month before he formalised the vote, when the military said he was unfit for office. "They can't scare us, we will destroy this gang at the elections," he said. The former newspaper editor and self-styled man of the people swept to power with a promise of change, spearheading a wave of peaceful protests in 2018 against corrupt post-Soviet elites. Pashinyan at the time mingled with enthusiastic crowds in the streets of Yerevan, winning over thousands of Armenians with animated revolutionary speeches. In the provinces, crowds of villagers greeted him as a hero, offering him fresh bread and berries as he led the historic protest movement. He walked hundreds of kilometres across the country, slept in the open, clambered onto the roofs of garages and stood on benches to deliver speeches. Three years on, and with his ratings dwindling, the tide has turned. "Traitor! Capitulator!" were among the insults hurled at Pashinyan by former supporters when he appeared in Yerevan recently surrounded by a security guards. Many refused to shake his hand. "Pashinyan yielded everything to the enemy, this man is a loser who ruined everything. He has failed on all of his promises," his nemesis, former president Robert Kocharyan, said at a recent meeting with supporters. Analyst Alexander Iskandaryan said "Pashinyan is rapidly losing popularity and faces an uphill battle in the upcoming elections." Pashinyan was born in 1975 in the small resort town of Ijevan in northern Armenia and studied journalism at Yerevan State University, but was expelled in 1995. Before entering politics, he worked as a reporter and newspaper editor. In 2009, he spent two years in prison on charges of trying to seize power and provoking riots in post-election violence in 2008. He was elected to parliament after his release. He would ultimately become prime minister in May 2018, following weeks of mass popular protests that forced veteran leader Serzh Sarkisian to resign after a decade in power. He then launched a crusade against corruption, initiated sweeping economic reforms and sidelined corrupt oligarchs and monopolies. He was widely credited for helping to accelerate economic growth, reduce poverty rates and create tens of thousands of new jobs. But then the coronavirus pandemic struck, followed by the war with Azerbaijan for territory Pashinyan's army had controlled for decades, after separatists broke from Baku in a war in the 1990s that left 30,000 people dead. As fighting last summer raged and Azerbaijan's technologically superior forces steadily gained territory, the polished politician with a soft handshake and bashful grin morphed into a tough-talking commander-in-chief. He called on Armenians to "unite and break the enemy's backbone" while his wife and son went to the front. When it was clear Armenia could not emerge victorious, he described having to sign the ceasefire that saw Russian peacekeepers descend on Nagorno-Karabakh, as "unspeakably painful" both personally and for the country. mkh-im/jbr/tgb
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