By Anna Vardanyan for Caucasus Watch

The pivotal regional event of the previous week was probably the summit of the leaders of member-states of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in Astana, which has already been featured as scandalous by several media outlets. “Kommersant-Daily” wrote that the reason is the failure to approve the candidacy of the Secretary General of the Alliance. Russian media reports that the "charismatic" Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has managed to overcome “Batka” (Lukashenko), “Yelbasi” (Nazarbaev) and even Putin.

Although the issue of change of the CSTO Secretary Generalship will eventually be resolved in early December. Nevertheless, a great noise has been evoked in the Armenian political circles, assuming that Armenia is most likely to lose that post and identifying this is a serious failure of the new government.

Let us be reminded, that this position was given to Armenia for a three years term. Yuri Khachaturov, who was sent by the previous government and did not manage to hold office until the end of the term, was recalled by the new Armenian authorities due to the criminal case against him. During the summit in Astana, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev insisted that the next Secretary General of the CSTO should be a representative of Belarus, according to the alphabetical sequence, whereas, RA Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan did not agree by proposing that Armenia's new representative should be appointed Secretary General until 2020. "Moskovsky Komsomolets" wrote that such a passionate discussion on staff appointment issues has never been held before, and the CSTO leaders were unable to make a decision after more than three hours of debating.

As a result, the discussion of the issue was moved back to the beginning of December. However, this was not the only disagreement during the CSTO summit in Astana. In fact, the session of the Assembly can be considered as a failure. The day before the summit, it was revealed that the joint air defense and missile defense agreement could not be reached. In other words, the military alliance has failed to create a unified air space. Secondly, it failed to invite Ilham Aliyev as a partner for the CSTO summit, although all prerequisites for that have been met. For instance, the CSTO has made changes that allow Azerbaijan to become an observer in the organization without Armenia's consent. Besides that, there was hope that through the Summit participants will manage to coordinate the exchange of hostages between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and the CSTO could then have declared this as the organization's achievement. But nothing came out of it. Nagorno Karabakh refused to transfer captives to Azerbaijan, and Nikol Pashinyan insisted that Armenia should maintain the quota by appointing the CSTO Secretary General.

According to some political analysts, all this speaks about the underdevelopment of the CSTO as an organization and the uncertainty about its capabilities.

The leader of the Christian-Democratic Movement, political scientist Levon Shirinyan believes that “This is a matter of the relationship between the civilized-and the uncivilized world. It is about Armenia's sovereign right to change its representative or not. What kind of organization is the CSTO, if a country cannot change its representative under special circumstances? The term conditions offered to Armenia must be respected. This is a manifestation of the imperfection of the structure. It is once again proven that a set of authoritarian regimes cannot make democratic decisions. No institution can win the world’s sympathy when the rule of law is not predominant. Armenia's position is much appreciated and is a typical example of the protection of national interests”. According to Levon Shirinyan, this was not the case with former RA authorities. "I said and reiterate, Russia is our strategic partner, but it has to respect our interests”, the analyst notes.

According to the head of the International Center for Human Development and adviser to the President, Tevan Poghosyan, the issue of leaving the CSTO Secretary General's mandate to Armenia is a matter of the country's image. "It is the country’s honor to assume the commitment and perform it till the end”.

NA Vice President, Republican party spokesperson Eduard Sharmazanov thinks that the situation relating to the CSTO is an obvious failure of Nikol Pashinyan's government: “Armenia consistently conceded its security position during Pashinyan’s rule, whereas, Armenia’s number one challenge is strengthening its security and ensuring a fair and a pro-Armenian settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict”, Sharmazanov said in his statement.