Armenia's parliament on Thursday (March 3) elected Vahagn Khachaturyan, hitherto minister of high-tech industry, to the post of president of the country, whose role is essentially ceremonial, after the surprise resignation of his predecessor in January.
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Vahagn Khachaturyan's candidacy for a seven-year term was endorsed by 71 lawmakers from the ruling Civil Contract party in a vote boycotted by the opposition.
"
Our region must become a platform for cooperation
," Vahagn Khachaturyan, 62, told MPs before the vote.
“
We must establish friendly relations with our neighbors, live in peace and develop our country within the framework of this logic
”.
In 2020, a war pitted Armenia against its neighbor Azerbaijan, another small ex-Soviet republic, over control of the Nagorny-Karabakh region, disputed for decades.
The conflict has left more than 6,500 dead and Armenia's humiliating military defeat, which resulted in the loss of disputed territories at the end of 2020, sparked massive street protests and a fight between the head of state , Armen Sarkisian, and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.
Armen Sarkisian resigned on January 23, believing that "
the president does not have the necessary tools to influence important processes of foreign and domestic policy in difficult times for the people and the country
", whose executive power is for the '
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An economist by training, Vahagn Khachaturyan, who is not affiliated with any party, was the mayor of the capital Yerevan between 1996 and 1998, before joining the Board of Directors of the Armenian bank Armeconombank, then being appointed in 2021 Minister of High Tech Industry.
Armenia's economy has been suffering since the collapse of the Soviet Union just over thirty years ago and depends in part on the money sent by the very large Armenian diaspora, a legacy of massive exile through the world after the massacres of the Ottoman era.