Civil Contract (Armenia)

The Civil Contract Party has no definite official ideology.[6] Its leader, Nikol Pashinyan, states: "There are no clear lines between political ideologies anymore ... in the 21st century, those lines disappeared. It's not acceptable for me to call our party 'liberal,' 'centrist,' or 'social democrat,' because the goals we have to achieve are beyond '-isms.'"[6] Despite this, Pashinyan himself has been described as a radical centrist,[7] a reformist,[8] or a liberal[9] (and occasionally a populist)[10] in favour of a liberal democracy by international media.

July 3, 2014 press conference

Civil Contract governing board in 2014

During the fifth convention of the party in June 2019 acting Minister of Territorial Administration and Infrastructures Suren Papikyan was elected as Chairman of the 21 member strong governing board.[19]

Civil Contract's governing board was introduced on 9 December 2013 during a press conference at the Ani Plaza Hotel. It was formed to organize the first party convention.

The current governing board is:[20]

• Arayik Harutyunyan, historian, former minister of education
• Alen Simonyan, lawyer, editor-in-chief of the Ararat Media Group
• Nikol Pashinyan, former journalist, former MP, prime minister
• Suren Papikyan, chairman of the governing board, MP
• Ruben Rubinyan, vice-president of the board, MP
• Eduard Aghajanyan
• Tigran Avinyan, deputy PM
• Hakob Arshakyan, former minister of high-tech industry
• Ararat Mirzoyan, former speaker of parliament
• Vilen Gabrielyan
• Romanos Petrosyan, former minister of the environment
• Arsen Torosyan, former minister of health, chief of staff of the PM
• Narek Babyan
• Arman Boshyan
• Lilit Makunts
• Sipan Pashinyan
• Mkhitar Hayrapetyan, former minister of the diaspora
• Vahagn Hovakimyan
• Armen Pambukhchyan
• Arpine Davoyan

The Civil Contract Return Fund was established to ensure that the party's funding complies with Armenian law and its activities are democratically organized. Funds donated to Civil Contract will be stored in the fund's account and vault. Accounting will be conducted under the supervision of the board of trustees, which is independent of the governing board and controls the fund's expenditures. According to the party's contract, "Citizens who have donated money or property to the Contract shall have the right to request information on spending, and their demands are to be satisfied within three days' time."

The Civil Contract board of trustees was announced on 22 February 2014. Haykak Arshamyan was elected chairman, and Hakob Simidyan was appointed director of the fund. Members are:

• Lara Aharonian, Women's Resource Center co-founder, director
• Haykak Arshamyan, PhD in history
• Levon Bagramyan, economist, political scientist, Washington, D.C.
• Arthur Ispiryan, musician
• Levon Hovsepyan, economist
• Ara Shirinyan, director
• Maro Matossian, Women's Support Center director
• Edgar Manukyan, PhD in economics, Toronto, Canada
• Sargis Kloyan, businessperson

July 3, 2014 press conference

The Civil Contract governing board published "Financing Politics and Civil Contract", an article touching on the issues of fiscal transparency and financing public and political life in Armenia, on 26 April 2014:

Financing politics is one of the essential entangled knots of the history of the Third Republic. How is the public-political activity financed in Armenia? It's a question the proper answer of which is not known. One can guess, put forward hypotheses, but the society does not have a reliable and verifiable answer to the question ... The most popular answer is that "we are funded by thousands of our supporters". This is an answer, which generates new questions: whom and how do the supporters give the money? Who takes it and under what conditions? How do others learn whether their retainer has donated that much, more or less money ...? From the very first stage of the debates over establishing "civil contract" public–political union the issues about funding the activities of the contract have been the subject of heated debate. How is the contract going to be financed? Who will be financing it? The answers to these questions were principal for us. And if we have serious ambition to achieve fundamental changes in public–political relations, we need to try to work ourselves out of the Armenian traditional funding mechanisms of political activity. We have formulated the problem the following way: if we need 1000 AMD, we need to find not a single person that will give us that money, but we need to find 1000 people each of whom will donate 1 AMD.

On March 31, 2018, Civil Contract leader Nikol Pashinyan and his supporters began a 200-kilometre (120 mi) march from Gyumri (Armenia's second-largest city) to the capital, Yerevan, to dissuade Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan from retaining power beyond his legal term limit.[21] On April 17, Nikol Pashinyan announced the start of a national, nonviolent "velvet revolution" to thousands of supporters gathered near the National Assembly.[22] On April 22, several hours after a brief meeting with Sargsyan, Pashinyan was arrested with about 250 other protesters.[23] After mass strikes by organized labor and streets blockaded by over 300,000 protesters (including soldiers and Civil Contract members), Sargsyan resigned on April 23.[24] He said then, "Nikol Pashinyan was right. I was wrong. The movement of the street is against my office. I'm fulfilling your demands."[25] According to contemporaneous reporting by Al Jazeera's Robin Forestier-Walker, "Thousands of people are on the streets, cheering and hugging each other, jumping up and down and honking their horns... things happened so quickly, I don't think the crowd was expecting this, but it is exactly what they wanted".[26]

The revolution was seen as an opportunity for Armenia to realign its foreign policy in the European direction. The revolution contradicted Russian policy, as it opposed the notion of the irreplaceability of post-Soviet leaders and posed a threat to authoritarianism in the post-Soviet space. The revolution in Armenia was deemed "European" in nature as it corresponded to European values and principles, both societal and political.[27]

On 18 March 2021, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced early parliamentary elections, to take place on 20 June 2021. The announcement was made during a period of political unrest in the country, following the defeat of Armenia in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war. Nikol Pashinyan subsequently resigned as Prime Minister, but continued his duties as acting Prime Minister.

Civil Contract confirmed its intention to participate in the 2021 Armenian parliamentary elections, with Nikol Pashinyan leading the party as its candidate for prime minister.[28] The party also confirmed that they would be running in the election independently, effectively dissolving the My Step Alliance.[29] While the party did run independently, Gurgen Arsenyan, leader of the United Labour Party confirmed that he would participate with Civil Contract. In addition, the vice-chairman of Mighty Homeland, Shirak Torosyan, also announced he would participate with Civil Contract.[30] Following the election, Civil Contract won 53.9% of the popular vote, gaining a supermajority of 71 seats in the National Assembly. Party leader Nikol Pashinyan was officially appointed Armenia's prime minister.[31]

On 31 August 2022, Nikol Pashinyan met with the President of the Council of the European Union, Charles Michel, in Brussels to discuss a peaceful resolution to the Armenia–Azerbaijan border crisis.[32]

On 17 February 2023, Nikol Pashinyan met with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Munich. The sides discussed various issues related to Armenia-European Union cooperation. The parties exchanged ideas on projects to be implemented in Armenia within the framework of the economic and investment plan of the Eastern Partnership.[33]

In February 2023, Pashinyan announced support of the European Union Mission in Armenia. According to Pashinyan, the mission became possible following negotiations held between Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the EU on the sidelines of the first European Political Community summit in Prague.[34] On 4 May 2023, Nikol Pashinyan stated, "Armenia is interested in deepening cooperation with the European Union" and that the EU mission would help "maintain international attention towards our region."[35]

• Programs of political parties in Armenia

• Official website (in Armenian)
• Payqar official website and underground newspaper (in Armenian)
• Haykakan Zhamanak website and newspaper. (in Armenian)
• Armenaker Kamilion has a substantial number of English translations of Pashinyan's articles in Payqar.