Every April 24 is a painful day for millions of Armenians around the world. This includes Lebanese Armenians. The horrifying atrocities committed by the Ottoman empire are some of the most terrifying examples of how far humanity can disintegrate and how barbaric and inhuman people can be.

On the eve of this painful memory, we must not let the memory and struggle for recognition and global condemnation of the genocide wane. But Armenia is in the news this week for another reason: massive protests and sit-ins that have forced the prime minister accused of a shameless Putin-style power grab, has stepped down, admitting he was wrong and the opposition was right.

Writing the sentence above, I couldn’t help but notice how simple and relatively peaceful and quick the ruling parties there succumbed to will of their taxpayers. I also couldn’t help but think of how our own Lebanese governments handle outrage and protests by its own people, and how reptilian our own leaders have become, who have no shame and scuff at and snuff out any peaceful methods to demand change and kickstart progress in line with the will of the people.

Despite everything Armenia has been through in the past century, from the 1915 Armenian Genocide, culminating in the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, it is a functioning democracy today, and has showed the world that power-grabs by the right wing in some countries will be successfully resisted with peaceful, democratic means.

Lebanon’s past century hasn’t been much better, but the progress made in terms of a liberal democracy has been a disaster in comparison to Armenia’s.

For those of you not up to speed with what’s going on in Armenia, the ex-president Serzh Sargsyan had served the maximum 10 years allowed under Armenia’s term limits. Before stepping down, he changed the laws so that many of the president’s powers are moved to the prime minister’s. 11 days ago, he was appointed prime minister. This is almost exactly what Putin did: when his term limit came up, he became prime minister, they changed the law so he could run for president again, and now he’s president again.

Now, Sargsyan’s party still has the majority, and maybe him resigning after days of protests and sit-in, won’t mean that him and his party don’t stay in control, but he did step down, and a power grab was indeed averted. He even went as far as saying that he was “wrong” and then opposition leader Nikol Pashinyan was “right”.

Imagine if our prime minister had stepped down when the people were protesting the garbage crisis and its many related issues.