President Armen Sarkissian over the weekend signed a decree scheduling a referendum for April 5 to address the issue of Armenia’s Constitutional court judges, effectively validating a controversial decision approved by parliament late last week, which left the fate of Constitutional Court judges in the hands of the voting public.
The referendum decision, introduced by the majority My Step party, handily passed parliament on Thursday when the ruling party opted to pull from the agenda a version of the bill that would give parliament the green light to oust members of Armenia’s high court. Instead, the My Step parliamentary faction introduced a measure that would bring their and the government’s grievance with the high court judges to a referendum.
The Constitutional Court standoff has been criticized by opposition forces within and outside parliament, challenging the legality of the amendments proposed by the My Step bloc.
Under the proposed amendments, the court’s chairman, Hrayr Tovmasyan, and six other members installed by former Armenian governments would be replaced by other judges to be confirmed by the current parliament controlled by My Step.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who welcomed Sarkissian’s decree, and his My Step party have expressed skepticism over the impartiality of the Constitutional Court judges, saying that they were appointed by the previous regime, which are deemed corrupt. In particular, they call Tovmasyan’s appointment, which occurred before the spring 2018 popular uprising, illegal, saying that the parliament speaker at the time colluded with former president Serzh Sarkisian to appoint Tovmasyan as Armenia’s chief justice.
”We will say ‘yes’ to the revolution, to freedom and to bright future on April 5, and will slam the door in the face of corruption,” Pashinyan wrote in a post on Facebook after the president’s announcement of the referendum date. he wrote.
President Sarkissian’s press service said that the president’s powers are limited only to scheduling the day of the referendum.
Yet it is comfortable to understand that our country has emerged from 25 years of an autocratic, neo-communist, nepotic, corrupt, mafia system under the rule organized by the power of monopolies dragging the country into greater social misery with resulted in a dangerous exodus. It is clear that all these policies, by gre or by force, have eaten at the workshop of the old regime and have kept nostalgia for enrichment by cronyism and corruption. So yes “the vox populi” is the best way TO democratIc to settle the expulsion of these former profiteers, cleanse the high judicial institution of these parasites of the state who have redrafted their Constitution to use, as to grant the immunite absolute in the face of their delicate or even criminal acts committed by these irresponsible politicians appointed by the money of the mafia in the service of corrupting power, from the commune with its rural kindergarten to the summit or the successive presidents who have passed the hand to set up international public funds for projects, trips by millions and billions of dollars to their bank account abroad. All this and all the elections rigged under the benediction and the endorsement of the observers of these international institutions. So we have a head of government who fights like a devil to eradicate this monstrous, delicate, criminal system with a president who has ordered an assassination and enriched himself with his family in demeasure and who pretends, incarcere, to resume Service. Yes the diaspora, far from the country, must understand this situation and moderate its advice but above all these international commissions, responsible for this situation which they have endorsed for 25 years must intervene, as they say, with “the greatest “knowing that only the voice of the people counts to guarantee DEMOCRATIE and the Republic … in danger with its neighborhood that violates international public law with the benediction of these institutions … for a few liters of oil or its derived dollar
Yes the diaspora, far from the country, must understand this situation and moderate its advice but above all these international commissions, responsible for this situation which they have endorsed for 25 years must intervene, as they say, with “the greatest “knowing that only the voice of the people counts to guarantee DEMOCRATIE and the Republic … in danger with its neighborhood that violates international public law with the benediction of these institutions … for a few liters of oil or its derived dollar