YEREVAN. – There is no signature of the President or any other official of the country under any edition of the Constitution of the Republic of Armenia (RA). Vladimir Vardanyan, majority My Step faction MP and chairman of the Standing Committee on State and Legal Affairs of the National Assembly (NA), stated this in a talk with journalists in parliament Wednesday, referring to the fact that with the amendment to the NA Rules of Procedure, the President of the country has been stripped of his power to sign constitutional amendments.

"This may have been due to the fact that the constitution in the Republic of Armenia has been constantly amended or adopted through a referendum. Now is the first time that it is amended by the National Assembly. But the constitution says that the President of the Republic of Armenia has only the powers provided by the constitution. This is problematic because there is no hierarchy between the norms of the constitution. And it turns out that if the constitution is amended by a referendum, no one signs [it], whereas if the same amendment is made by the National Assembly, it would have gone to the President.

Besides, the President of the Republic of Armenia has no power in terms of signing constitutional amendments, he cannot apply to the Constitutional Court, he cannot refuse to sign.

It is incomprehensible at this time whether the constitutional amendment should be narrowly considered as a law. This comes from the fact that we [Armenia] have taken a constitutional model of some X state, we have made some changes in it, but as a result they [distorted] it,” Vardanyan added.