Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan delivered a speech at the end of the discussion on the bill on making amendments to the Constitution at the National Assembly.

In his speech, Nikol Pashinyan said the following:

“The existing Constitution of Armenia provides for a model of the Constitutional Court that international experts have evaluated as balanced. The essence of the model is that three candidates for judges of the Constitutional Court are nominated by the President and Government of the Republic of Armenia and the General Assembly of Judges. The judges are elected by the National Assembly, and the Constitutional Court becomes the upper instance for balancing the three branches of power. Moreover, there are two major subtleties in the new regulations of the Constitution. By the existing Constitution, the President of Armenia and the judges can’t be members of any political party.

The risks of establishing monarchy in the Constitutional Court on the part of the president of the Constitutional Court have also been mitigated because, by the existing Constitution, unlike the previous one, the president of the Constitutional Court shall be elected for a term of six years, not for life. Moreover, a judge of the Constitutional Court may be elected president of the Court only once. Besides this, the abnormal practice of the same person being member of the Constitutional Court for 35 years has also been eliminated.

By the new Constitution, 12 years is prescribed as the term of powers of the judge of the Constitutional Court. Moreover, the same person can be elected judge of the Constitutional Court only once.

This model was also introduced as a result of considering and analyzing the problems with the Constitution enshrined in the Third Republic and through the encouragement and support of international experts because, de facto and de jure, the Constitutional Court has contributed to the falsification of elections, the existence of illegitimate authorities and the seizure of power.

In this period, Armenia has been in the stage of transition from a semi-presidential system to a parliamentary system, and perhaps we haven’t managed to have the Constitutional Court of our dreams yet. When will we have the Constitutional Court of our dreams that won’t be under the direction of a political group? Will we have it? Yes, but if we don’t change anything, we will have it in 2035 the latest because the representatives of the former authorities (Republican Party of Armenia) wrote transitional provisions in the Constitution in order to make sure the Constitutional Court is in effect as long as possible.

As a result, we have members of the Constitutional Court appointed by ex-presidents for different terms, and even though the term of office of a judge of the Constitutional Court is 21 years by the existing Constitution, the prevailing majority of the members of the Constitutional Court will serve much longer.

The case of the president of the Constitutional Court is a separate case. Although the existing Constitution envisages that the president of the Constitutional Court shall serve for six years, the existing president of the Constitutional Court will serve for 17 years, that is, until 2035. As one of the authors of the existing Constitution or better yet the reliable person of Serzh Sargsyan among the writers of the text of the Constitution, and the de facto leader of the process, he did everything possible to make sure the text of the Constitution is suitable for him. In essence, this was a deal between Serzh Sargsyan and Hrayr Tovmasyan with the following logic: If Tovmasyan writes the text of the Constitution that provides Serzh Sargsyan with the opportunity to serve until the end of his life, then the text also has to give Tovmasyan the opportunity to serve until the end of his life as president of the Constitutional Court.

Hrayr Tovmasyan hasn’t reduced the terms of office of the old members of the Constitutional Court, that is, he has given them the opportunity to serve longer than the term provided for by the Constitution for his personal interests. He needed to be elected member of the Constitutional Court through the old procedure because it was initially envisaged that he was going to be elected member of the Constitutional Court through the old procedure that provided that opportunity. This is why Hrayr Tovmasyan made sure the old members continue to serve their terms of office according to the existing Constitution. If their terms of office were reduced, Hrayr Tovmasyan couldn’t have been elected member of the Constitutional Court for 17 years.

As a result of all this, to have a Constitutional Court described in the Constitution, the Armenian people had to wait until 2035 because Hrayr Tovmasyan, with the help of his political party (Republican Party of Armenia) had the status of president of the Constitutional Court until 2035, even though the existing Constitution provided for something that was totally different.

I don’t want to violate anyone’s presumption of innocence, but the Republican Party of Armenia has crossed the limit of not only logic and morality, but also the Criminal Code. The problem is that the term of office of former president of the Constitutional Court Gagik Harutyunyan was going to expire on March 25, 2018. If he served until the end, Hrayr Tovmasyan couldn’t have been elected member of the Constitutional Court for a term of 17 years. To make this possible, the Republican Party convinced Gagik Harutyunyan (he was already elected president of the Supreme Judicial Council) to resign in early March (20 days before the term of office) so that Hrayr Tovmasyan could be elected president of the Constitutional Court for life during the regular session of the National Assembly starting on March 20, 2018 (the session was the final session before entry into force of the new Constitution).

The Special Investigation Service has instituted a case regarding this, but my political evaluation is that this falsehood and the whole story have led to usurpation of power.

I would like to declare that the Constitutional Court and its president have usurped the power belonging to the people of Armenia through manipulation of the Constitution. In the text of the existing Constitution, Hrayr Tovmasyan has reserved more power to the Constitutional Court than is reserved to the people of the Republic of Armenia who are the highest bearers of power in our country. The problem is that, according to the existing regulation, it is impossible to make an amendment to the Constitution without the permission of the Constitutional Court. This means that the people of Armenia may want to make an amendment to the Constitution, but the Constitutional Court won’t allow it since it will consider the aspiration unconstitutional. Moreover, nobody can dispute the position of the Constitutional Court. So, in this situation, the people of Armenia can have the desire to deprive Hrayr Tovmasyan of the illegal status, but the Constitutional Court won’t allow it since it will consider it unconstitutional. This means that Hrayr Tovmasyan and the Republican Party of Armenia have caused the emergence of an entity that is above the people, and this is the Constitutional Court.