YEREVAN. – Past newspaper of Armenia writes: “Since the beginning of this year, the issue of ratification [by Armenia] of the Istanbul Convention has been hotly circulated by the current authorities.

It became clear that the overwhelming majority of citizens opposed the ratification of the Convention. In addition, many government lawmakers have expressed a view that they are also against ratification of the Convention.

And some lawyers have suggested that certain provisions of the Istanbul Convention contradict the RA Constitution.

Only after the strong wave against the ratification of the Istanbul Convention did the authorities decide that the issue of ratification of the Convention would not be put to parliament this year, and Justice Minister Rustam Badasyan announced it, but that still did not mean that the authorities finally give up their intention to ratify it.

In this case, for the society the question remains why the current authorities are so interested in ratifying the Istanbul Convention that the public is against.

Apparently, the interest of the government is primarily due to the financial factor. By ratification, they intend to receive grants from European institutions, and the press reports that a 600,000-euro grant has been provided solely for the promotion of the Istanbul Convention.

The other interest of the authorities is due to political dividends. There is information in the press that recently, Speaker of the National Assembly Ararat Mirzoyan met with Gianni Buquicchio, President of the European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission). During the meeting they also touched upon the ratification of the Istanbul Convention.

And Ararat Mirzoyan noted that if they manage to change the current staff of the Constitutional Court and remove Hrayr Tovmasyan, they could easily ratify the Istanbul Convention. According to Mirzoyan, the most serious obstacle to ratification at this stage is the CC and the CC President.

It turns out that the Armenian authorities, deliberately trying to bypass the theme that the overwhelming majority of the population will not allow the Convention to be ratified, are offering political trade to Europeans. If the Europeans silently support them for pressure on the Constitutional Court, they will in turn put the Istanbul Convention on the parliament's agenda."