Armenian opposition must win before 2026 vote or face defeat, expert says

The Armenian opposition will lose the 2026 parliamentary elections unless it defeats the ruling party before voting day, political strategist Armen Badalyan says, arguing that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s team dominated the political agenda and turned key diplomatic moves to its advantage.

“If the opposition does not beat the authorities before the vote, it is defeated,” Badalyan told Panorama.am in an interview on Monday. “Post-election processes are excluded. People will not take to the streets for either the government or the opposition.”

Badalyan said 2025 had been “successful and victorious” for Pashinyan’s government from a political standpoint, even as he described the year as negative for the state itself due to concessions made by Armenia.

He pointed to a peace agreement preliminarily signed in Washington as fitting neatly into the ruling team’s election strategy. “It doesn’t matter whether the agreement actually brings peace or not; from a PR perspective it fits the election campaign,” he said, adding that the government set the agenda throughout the year while the opposition failed to do so.

“The fact that the prime minister remained in office for another year is also a success for the authorities,” Badalyan said.

He said the government’s only tactical failure was an unsuccessful attempt to engineer a change of leadership in the Armenian Apostolic Church. “This is something they will not succeed at for a very long time,” he added.

Assessing the opposition’s performance, Badalyan said 2025 was a failed year. “They neither removed Civil Contract from power nor became agenda-setters. They are always reacting to the government’s agenda, trying to reject it, and they have no agenda of their own,” he said.

Badalyan argued the opposition has weak ties to society, with only a handful of lawmakers from the Hayastan and Pativ Unem factions maintaining sporadic regional outreach. “Those who are weak are not followed,” he said.

Looking ahead to the June 2026 parliamentary elections and local elections later that year, Badalyan said the European Union would “do everything” to ensure the ruling party’s retention of power. “The current authorities are not EU allies; they are EU agents in Armenia,” he said, characterizing that outcome as a victory for the government and a failure of the opposition.

He also criticized opposition forces for failing to secure visible backing from Iran or Russia, citing remarks by Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, who warned against the so-called “Zangezur corridor”. “Iran was a potential ally but that alliance was rejected,” Badalyan said.

According to the expert, an opposition strategy focused on post-election mobilization or attempts to “de-program” an externally driven electoral scenario would fail. “You cannot enter someone else’s game and undo it,” he said. “You must think how to defeat the authorities before the election.”

He added that no opposition force currently appears capable of doing so on its own.