The fact that we are forming a commission on constitutional changes is not at all a fact that this will be crowned with constitutional changes. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stated this at an online press conference today, January 24, answering the question of why constitutional reforms will be carried out and why it is necessary to change the basic law for the 5th time in 30 years .

“It is not at all a fact that constitutional changes will take place in Armenia. Especially after November 9, 2020 and before that, this topic is constantly in the public domain. The fact that we are forming a commission on constitutional changes is not at all a fact that this will be crowned with constitutional changes. We have the task of auditing the current Constitution for four years of activity and see what are the best places and opportunities. Or, in connection with the audit of the Constitution, perhaps we will make changes to the legislation.

The Constitution says that the resignation of the President of Armenia comes into force from the moment of its publication, but the constitutional law “NA Rules of Procedure” says that he can withdraw the application within 7 days: there are very serious contradictions here. We will see what material is formed as a result of the work of the commission, after which it will be the turn of political decisions,” Pashinyan said.

Asked if the aim is to change the system of government by the proposed changes, for example, to return to a semi-presidential system of government, the Prime Minister replied:

“My personal conviction is that the system of government should not change. After the 2018 revolution, there were many arguments, and there were many people who convinced me: let's go for constitutional changes, that is, return to a semi-presidential system. It was clear that after 2018, changes of this kind were very likely for us that they would pass, there was a very high probability that after these elections I would have won the presidential election, but I spoke out against this, saying that this is a new system, and we have to give the opportunity to constantly make constitutional changes is not so good.

After November 9, 2020, I began to think that maybe we should seriously think about it, but later, when we overcame the internal political crisis through elections, I realized that if we were not in a parliamentary system of government, there was a high probability that we would have gone through a major upheaval.”