YEREVAN (Noyan Tapan)–The Constitutional Court of Armenia last week began its hearings on the lawsuits filed by 65 of the National Assembly deputies over the non-correspondence of Article 17 of Armenia’s Law "On Elections to Local Self-Government," to the Republic’s current Constitution.
The suit was filed because the Prosecutor General had appealed the decision made by the Supreme Court over the returns of the Nov. 24 run-off in the 1996 local elections of the governor of Yerevan’s Achapniak Community.
The decision by the Presidium of the Supreme Court was against the decision of the Supreme Court.
Meanwhile–under the aforementioned Article of Law–the Supreme Court’s decision is to be the final.
The plaintiff and the respondent agreed that the requiremen’s in Article 17 do not contradict the Constitution currently in force.
The plaintiff was represented by members of the National Assembly Communist faction Vladimir Darbinian–Frunzeh Kharatian and Vazgen Safarian.
The defendants were represented by the Chairman of the National Assembly Committee on judicial affairs Eduard Yegorian and Deputy Chief of the National Assembly’s Legal Service Arman Mkrtoumian.
The Court decided to summon the Supreme Court’s Chairman–Tariel Barseghian and former Prosecutor General–Artavazd Gevorgian to account for their legal practices.