If I don’t become prime minister, in four hours you won’t have a job; you’ll be standing in the document market trying to make money. On March 26, during a conversation with journalists, Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan made a similar statement, responding to a question from a representative of an opposition media outlet.
He expressed confidence that the journalist would vote for the Civil Contract party, but wouldn’t say anything about it because he would lose his funding. “You won’t say anything more, because starting tomorrow, your funding will cease. If you don’t vote for the Communist Party, your funding will cease again, because your work will become meaningless. Because a journalist like you won’t be needed in the Republic of Armenia. You will be left without a job. “You have a job because I’m prime minister, because the people who finance you need you to come and stand under this microphone, beat your chest, and say whatever you want, insulting, excuse me, bordering on morality, and they say, ‘Look how weak he is, he doesn’t care.’ But my strength doesn’t lie in his not caring; my strength lies in my legitimacy,” Pashinyan emphasized. According to him, such a journalist wouldn’t have a job in a regular journalistic environment.