Serzh Azati Sargsyan (, ; born 30 June 1954)Official biography of Serzh Sargsyan . President.am. Retrieved on 21 June 2014. is an Armenian politician who served as the third President of Armenia from 2008 to 2018, and twice as the Prime Minister of Armenia from 2007 to 2008 and again from 17 to 23 April 2018, when he was forced to resign in the 2018 Armenian revolution.
He won the February 2008 presidential election with the backing of the ruling Republican Party of Armenia, a party in which he serves as chairman, and took office in April 2008."Armenia: Sarkisian Sworn In As President" , Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 9 April 2008. On 18 February 2013, he was re-elected as president and served the entire term.
Despite pledging in 2014 not to become prime minister again while supporting an amendment of the constitution in 2015 that would allow it, Sargsyan was again elected prime minister in April 2018, in what opposition figures described as a "power grab". Six days after taking office, Sargsyan resigned after large-scale protests. Sargsyan is currently the leader of the Republican Party, which was the ruling party of Armenia from 1999 to 2018 and is currently represented in parliament as a part of the opposition I Have Honor Alliance.
Early life and career Serzh Sargsyan (born Serzhik Azati Sargysan) was born on 30 June 1954 in Stepanakert in the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast. He is the son of Azat Avetisi Sargsyan (1929–2013) and Nora Sargsyan․ His father's family hailed from the village of Tegh in the Armenian SSR, and moved to Stepanakert after the arrest of Serzh Sargsyan's grandfather during the 1937 Great Purge. He entered Yerevan State University in 1971 and served in the Soviet Armed Forces in the Ural region from 1971 to 1972. He began his career in 1975 at the Electrical Devices Factory in Yerevan.. hhk.am He graduated from the Philological Department of Yerevan State University in 1979. In 1983, he married his wife, Rita (née Dadayan). In addition to his native Armenian, he is fluent in Russian and also knows Azerbaijani. He is not related to the former Prime Minister of Armenia, Tigran Sargsyan, who served under him, nor to his successor as President Armen Sarkissian.
Political career Early career Starting in 1979, Sargsyan held several positions in the Stepanakert Komsomol Committee: first as division head, then second secretary and first secretary (his long-time political ally Robert Kocharyan served as his deputy). He then became the Stepanakert City Committee Propaganda Division Head, the Nagorno-Karabakh Regional Committee Communist Organizations' Unit Instructor, and finally became assistant to Genrikh Poghosyan, the First Secretary of the Nagorno-Karabakh Regional Committee.
In November 1989, Sargsyan was a delegate from Nagorno-Karabakh to the first congress of the Pan-Armenian National Movement. He was elected to the Supreme Council of Armenia in 1990. During the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, Sargsyan was involved in organizing the defense of Nagorno-Karabakh and the formation of the NKR Defense Army in various capacities. In January 1992, when the first government of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR) was formed with Oleg Yesayan as prime minister, Sargsyan was appointed head of the Defense Committee, a position he held until the dissolution of the government in August 1992. Sargsyan then became a member of the seven-man State Defense Committee of the NKR (effectively the government of the NKR) which was formed in August 1992. Sargsyan held the position of minister of the army within the State Defense Committee.
From 1993 to 1995 he served his first term as Armenia's Minister of Defense under President Levon Ter-Petrosyan. In 1995 he became Minister of National Security of Armenia (initially called the State Security Department) and from 1996 to 1999 he concurrently served as Minister of Interior. In February 1998, Sargsyan, along with then-Prime Minister Robert Kocharyan and Defense Minister Vazgen Sargsyan, forced President Ter-Petrosyan to resign in order to prevent him from accepting a peace plan for the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict put forward by international mediators in September 1997. The proposal envisioned the return of most of the Armenian-occupied territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan in exchange for security guarantees, but left the final resolution of the status of Nagorno-Karabakh for future negotiations. From 1999 to 2000 he served as the Chief of Staff for President Robert Kocharyan, and then served once again as the Defense Minister of Armenia from 2000 to 2007. He was also the Secretary of the National Security Council led by President Kocharyan from 1999 to 2007. On 4 April 2007 Sargsyan was appointed as the Prime Minister of Armenia, following the sudden death of Andranik Margaryan.
Presidential election Sargsyan, with President Kocharyan's backing, was viewed as the strongest contender for the post of the President of Armenia in the February 2008 presidential election. Full provisional results showed him winning about 53% of the vote, a first round majority, well ahead of second place candidate Levon Ter-Petrosyan."Sargsyan wins Armenian presidential race", Xinhua, 20 February 2008. The 2008 Presidential election was hailed as largely democratic by OSCE, the European Union (EU) and Western monitors.European Commission shares OSCE assessment of Armenia's presidential election . Panarmenian.net (22 February 2008). Retrieved on 21 June 2014.
Ter-Petrosyan's supporters, disputing the official results, held large protests in Yerevan for over a week following the election, until they were violently broken up on 1 March; ten people (eight protestors and two police officers) were killed, and a state of emergency was imposed for 20 days, ending on 20 March 2008.
Presidency (2008–2018)
Serzh Sargsyan was sworn in as president at the Yerevan Opera House on 9 April 2008. Referring to the "painful events" that followed the election, he " everybody to look forward, together, to seek and find the way for reconciliation, development, and future of Armenia." He appointed Tigran Sargsyan, who had been the Chairman of the Central Bank and is not a member of a political party, as Prime Minister. According to the Freedom House report "In 2011, the government took concrete steps to fulfill longstanding and often repeated promises to confront corruption. E-government services reduced opportunities for bribery, while new regulations and stricter enforcement led to higher numbers of corruption lawsuits and fines against senior officials and large companies. Owing to a more consolidated government effort to eradicate corruption, Armenia's corruption rating from 5.50 to 5.25."Nations in Transit 2012: Armenia . Freedomhouse.org. Retrieved on 21 June 2014.
During Sargsyan's presidency the record of the freedom of speech and the freedom of press in general also improved in Armenia. Internet penetration rose sharply – from 6.2 percent in 2008 to 37 percent in 2011, providing greater access to online media, which rapidly grew in number, including blogosphere – with over 10,000 bloggers in 2011.
After the elections Sargsyan also authorized opposition rallies to take place in Yerevan and pledged to comply with the Council of Europe's demands for an end to the government's crackdown on the opposition.
Civil society also grew considerably during Sargsyan's presidency, with the number of non-governmental organizations growing at a higher rate and with civic activists succeeding in raising public awareness and holding important campaigns in the sphere of human rights, environmental protection and social justice. However, according to Freedom House, public advocacy still had limited impact on public policy.
Economy The start of Sargsyan's presidency coincided with the Great Recession. In 2009, Armenia's GDP contracted over 14%, which according to the World Bank was the fifth worst in the world that year after the three Baltic states and Ukraine. GDP growth subsequently stabilized at around 3% by 2013. As of 2014, Armenia's GDP is below the pre-crisis levels. During his first term of presidency, the official poverty rate doubled and reached 32.4% in 2012. According to official data, some 213,000 people have left Armenia from 2008 to 2013. In 2012, Armenia was ranked 39th out of 179 economies according to the Index of Economic Freedom and ranked 19th freest among the 43 countries in the Europe region., The Heritage Foundation.
In September 2013 and under Sargsyan's direction, Armenia announced its intentions of joining the Eurasian Economic Union with Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia. The Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU or EEU) is an economic union of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia, and came into force on 1 January 2015. Treaties aiming for Armenia's accession to the Eurasian Economic Union was signed on 9 October 2014. Armenia's accession treaty came into force on 2 January 2015. The Eurasian Economic Union has an integrated single market of 176 million people and a gross domestic product of over 4 trillion U.S. dollars (PPP). The EEU introduces the free movement of goods, capital, services and people and provides for common transport, agriculture and energy policies, with provisions for a single currency and greater integration in the future.
Foreign policy
Nagorno-Karabakh
Sargsyan made his first address in front of the 63rd session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on 25 September 2008. In his speech he referenced the 2008 South Ossetia conflict and emphasized the need for the United Nations to help bring peaceful resolution to armed conflicts around the world, including the one in Nagorno-Karabakh. He also mentioned how Azerbaijan's military buildup along with increasing war rhetoric and threats risked causing renewed problems in the South Caucasus.
Sargsyan continued the policy towards the peaceful resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict pursued by his predecessors, which constitutes one of the main goals of the Armenian foreign policy.Foreign policy . Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Armenia. Sargsyan repeatedly stated that the Armenian side is interested in finding a just and exclusively peaceful solution to the conflict and that the OSCE Minsk Group is the viable format within which the peace talks should continue.Nagorno Karabakh Republic: History and Current Reality . President of Armenia official site.President Serzh Sargsyan participated at the solemn event dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) . Armenpress.am. 20 December 2010.Serzh Sargsyan: Armenia's foreign policy is based on mutually beneficial cooperation with global and regional players . Arminfo.am. Retrieved on 21 June 2014. He continued negotiations with Azerbaijan and had a number of meetings with the president of Azerbaijan within the framework of OSCE Minsk Group. On 2 November 2008, Ilham Aliyev and Serzh Sargsyan traveled to Moscow for talks with Dmitry Medvedev. The talks ended in the three Presidents signing a declaration confirming their commitment to continue talks. The two presidents met again in 2009 in Saint Petersburg and on 22 November 2009, together with several world leaders, in Munich where President Aliyev once more threatened to resort to military force to reestablish control over the region if the two sides did not reach an agreeable settlement."Azerbaijan military threat to Armenia ." The Daily Telegraph. 22 November 2009. Retrieved 23 November 2009.
Sargsyan blames the Azerbaijani side for hampering the peace process and for pursuing an openly anti-Armenian stance. According to him, the anti-Armenian policies of Azerbaijan, such as "state-supported falsifications of history", "hostile propaganda against Armenia and Armenians" and "military build-up" prove that Azerbaijan does not want peace.