YEREVAN. – As long as the government representatives in the National Assembly [(NA)] describe themselves as people without will and are guided exclusively by the will of one person [PM Nikol Pashinyan], I have no hope that we can influence the decision-making of those people. Taron Simonyan, an MP of the opposition Bright Armenia Party (BAP), told this to reporters in the NA Friday, when asked why they do not participate in today’s NA debates on electing new Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) members and voice their respective concerns.

Simonyan added that he knows Gagik Jhangiryan—a candidate for SJC member and former military prosecutor—as a very good professional. "He has a contribution in the field of legal science. We did not touch upon the personal characteristics of the candidate because we said that we do not have a problem from a professional point of view. But a political decision is a political decision, and [therefore] we [Bright Armenia] do not participate in the election of two candidates for the SJC member," he said.

The BAP lawmaker added that last year there was an internal arrangement regarding the SJC member candidates to nominate one candidate from the government and one from the opposition, but now the authorities have violated that arrangement. "Yes, we tried to nominate; they refused," Taron Simonyan stated, but he did not say who he was talking about.