Former Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan attends at European Council meeting in Brussels on November 24, 2017 | Emmanuel Dunand/AFP via Getty Images Armenian strongman does a Putin Serzh Sargsyan insists it’s not his third term in power, but his critics have taken to the streets of Yerevan.

Armenia’s parliament appointed ex-President Serzh Sargsyan as the country’s prime minister on Tuesday as mass protests against his continued rule paralyzed the capital Yerevan.

Sargsyan was elected with 77 lawmakers in favor and 17 against. He had stepped down a week earlier in line with constitutional rules on term limits, after ruling Armenia for a decade.

The vote completed the Caucasus nation’s switch from a presidential to a parliamentary system following a disputed 2015 referendum, a move the government describes as a boost for democracy.

But many Armenians see the system change as a scheme designed to allow Sargsyan — who has become increasingly unpopular during his time in office — to maintain his grip on power. Under the new constitution, the president’s powers will be transferred to the prime minister.

Sargsyan had long promised not to run for either president or prime minister after the end of his 2018 term, but changed his tune in March this year.

He is not the first strongman in the region to circumvent term limit laws by becoming prime minister: In 2008, Russia’s Vladimir Putin did just that, swapping positions with Dmitry Medvedev.

In a speech ahead of the vote on Tuesday, Sargsyan rejected accusations of a power grab. “If I am elected, it won’t be the third government term of Serzh Sargsyan, but rather the first term of a Republican Party of Armenia government in a parliamentary Armenia,” he said.

As the ruling Republican Party dominates parliament together with their junior coalition partner, Sargsyan’s appointment as prime minister was virtually certain once he was accepted as a candidate.

Activists have held small-scale protests for weeks, hoping to deter the government from nominating the ex-president. The opposition also held several days of rallies.

But when the ruling Republican Party of Armenia declared Sargsyan their sole candidate for prime minister on Monday, the demonstrations snowballed.

Thousands took to the streets, heading opposition lawmaker Nikol Pashinyan’s call for “civil disobedience” despite the police warning that they would disperse any protests.

Starting on Monday, a swelling crowd of protesters began shutting down Yerevan, blocking streets and encircling state institutions.

Demonstrators entered the state radio station and university campuses and disrupted the capital’s metro service. They briefly tried to storm the parliament, but were blocked by police.

At least 29 were arrested and several were injured in clashes between protesters and security forces. Human Rights Watch called on the Armenian government to respect the right to peaceful assembly.

Pashinyan, who was taken to hospital with an eye injury on Monday, declared the protests the start of a “velvet revolution” — borrowing the name of the peaceful mass demonstrations that ended Czechoslovakia’s one-party rule in 1989.

Speaking to POLITICO last month, Pashinyan vowed to start a “people’s movement” to prevent Sargsyan from becoming prime minister, but he stressed that protests had to remain nonviolent.

On April 11, the nation’s parliament unanimously ratified a landmark accord with the European Union. The so-called Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement (CEPA) was signed in November last year.

CEPA aims to deepen cooperation across a wide range of sectors while contributing to the “strengthening of democracy” in Armenia. It will now need to be ratified by all EU member countries.