Today, it was not finally clear from the session of the Constitutional Reforms Council whether the 11 members of the council agreed to remove the controversial principle of the stable majority of the parliament from the Constitution until the 2026 elections, without waiting for the constitutional referendum scheduled for 2027.
Daniel Ioannisyan, the head of the Association of Informed Citizens, who submitted the proposal, is sure that in order to have a more politically healthy atmosphere, we should go to the elections with the amended Constitution.
“Why is there a need to change that principle, the first is that it contradicts the essence of parliamentarism,” said Ioannisyan, continuing. – “This amendment, in the form we proposed, can be changed by the National Assembly with the votes of two-thirds of the total number of deputies, and does not contradict other provisions of the Constitution, including those related to Articles 90 or 149.”
According to the Constitution adopted in 2015 during the Republican era, if any party does not receive more than 50 percent of the mandates as a result of the National Assembly elections, and the political forces that have passed the threshold are unable to form a coalition, then the force that received the maximum number of votes eventually acquires so many additional mandates that in the parliament have a majority. For example, there may be a situation where the force that has gathered 25-30 percent of the voters’ votes becomes the majority and forms a government alone.
“Such a system does not exist in any full-fledged country in the world, it exists only in San Marino. And lastly, I should mention that we are talking about a settlement that was introduced in Italy by Benito Mussolini exactly 100 years ago, in 1924, with false promises of stability, as time has shown, with false promises,” emphasized Ioannisyan.
Not all members of the commission expressed their opinion at today’s discussion, and some of them joined the session online and did not even ask questions, while according to the reporter, if the process is delayed for several months, it will fail, because after changing that provision of the Constitution, changes will still be necessary. in the Code, etc.
The government deputies and the minister of justice present at the session were not against the actual change, but not in an urgent manner.
“Personally, my attitude is as follows: study in detail, go deeper, understand. Undoubtedly, as a concept, it is acceptable to abandon the stable majority, but I am still against changing it as a separate part. But the discussions will continue,” Minister Grigor Minasyan said.
Moreover, according to the impression of the Minister of Justice, this opinion is also shared by the council members. – “Many of the members of the Council were in favor of the general idea, but they were not in favor today, that is, not to form a concept, but to change one article that intersects, and at least from a legal-professional point of view, there was concern that a contradiction with other articles would arise.”
According to Vladimir Vardanyan, chairman of the State and Legal Affairs Committee of the National Assembly, such a partial solution can create problems.
“In addition to that, there can also be correlation with other articles, and in the end we are talking about balancing the branches of government, we are talking about changing the electoral system, which should be implemented not piecemeal, that is, one episode here, one episode here, but there should be such a solution that would be comprehensive and include answers to all possible questions,” Vardanyan emphasized.
Judging by today’s speeches, three of the 11 members of the commission, representatives of political society, are in favor of abandoning the provision of a stable majority until 2026, the views of Karen Tumanyan, a member of the Supreme Judicial Council, Anahit Manasyan, a human rights defender, and Yeghishe Kirakosyan, the representative of Armenia for legal affairs, did not become clear.
The opposition field is not clear either. Grigor Arakelyan, the representative of the “Republic” party, said that in their party they discussed and decided that they are in favor of complete, not partial, amendments to the Constitution. – “Partial change is currently not acceptable, given that any partial change to the Constitution can be perceived as a coercion, a forced step to reach a peace agreement. Based on these considerations, we believe that the amendments to the Constitution are currently out of date.”
“Serzh Sargsyan invested in Armenia. Now we say, let’s remove the Mussolini mechanism, and this discussion is about it, and the more this discussion goes, the more I understand that this mechanism will not be removed,” declared Edmon Marukyan, the leader of the “Enlightened Armenia” party. :
He suggests looking at the issue simply before discussing the legal details. Do the committee members want to give up the stable majority until the 2026 elections or not? – “No one cares about the rest of the stories, because: ‘yes, we want to remove it, but we will remove it later.’ I mean, who told you that you will be in power later and have a chance to get rid of that Mussolini system? Therefore, you should use that chance when it exists, when you have those levers, or stand up and honestly say, “Well, we said it then, we don’t want to change it now, what do you want?”
Marukyan is reminded of déjà vu by the discussions about the problematic nature of the stable majority clause, he recalled that exactly 9 years ago, in 2015, on September 5 He gave an interview to “Freedom”.again talking about the need to abandon the stable majority.
