YEREVAN. – Hraparak daily of Armenia writes: The Constitutional Court [(CC)], after long delays, yesterday examined the distressful petition of a number of community leaders submitted back in March, and denied it.

"As a result of the equality of votes in the mentioned case, in fact, no decision was made, therefore, under Article 62, Part 9 of the constitutional law ‘On the Constitutional Court,’ the petition is considered denied," they informed us from the CC.

Let us remind that it is [about the fact] that under the Constitution, the head and the council of elders of local self-government bodies [in Armenia] are elected by the communities, whereas last year amendments were made in the EC [(Electoral Code)] by the ‘light hand’ of the authorities. It was specified that in the communities with more than 4 thousand voters the elections for the council of elders are held by the proportional [representation] electoral system; that is, the council of elders will be elected by the community head.

Also, with an amendment made in the law, in the transitional provisions of the law, they specified the institute of temporary acting [(TA)] community leaders; that is, the authorities reserved themselves the right not to call elections as soon as the term [in office] concludes, but to first appoint as TA the person they want, and then organize the elections through him so that the victory of the pro-government candidate is guaranteed.

The CC was repeatedly putting off the examination of the matter since March until [PM] Nikol Pashinyan, in fact, were to finally usurp power through LSG [(local self-government)] elections. Yesterday, however, it decided to examine and, thinking that the public would not notice their illegal decision in these turbulent times, decided to “take care of” it.