On 15 September, the Armenian Parliament appointed three new judges for the Constitutional Court (CC). All three were nominated by the President, the government and the General Assembly of Judges. Only the members of the ruling My Step faction took part in the voting, while the representatives of the opposition Prosperous Armenia and Bright Armenia factions boycotted the seating.
The government’s pick for the court was Edgar Shatiryan, a 40-year-old law lecturer, while Armenia’s President Armen Sarkissian nominated Artur Vagharshyan, a chair of jurisprudence at Yerevan State University. The nominee from Armenia’s General Assembly of Judges was Yervand Khundkaryan, who headed the Court of Cassation, Armenia’s highest body of criminal and administrative justice, for the last two years. The need to elect three judges at one time occurred after the new amendments to the constitution (Caucasus Watch reported) came into force on 26 June. In addition, the chairman of the CC, Hrayr Tovmasyan lost his position as chairman of the court. Now the court will be headed by one of the judges whose powers have been preserved.
As for the boycott of the opposition factions, both (Bright Armenia and Prosperous Armenia) stated that their protest was not related specifically to the candidates. “You [My Step representatives] yourself know that we are challenging the process of adopting those constitutional amendments in the CC, the consequence of which is today’s voting. Now you have complicated this problem so much that I cannot objectively vote for candidates… because you have started an illegal, unconstitutional process,” said Taron Simonyan from Bright Armenia.
Naira Zohrabyan from Prosperous Armenia also spoke about legal problems. She noted that there is a tradition in parliament when the representative structure and its candidates meet not only with the parliamentarians from the ruling faction, but also with small factions. “Since 2007, I have been in parliament and I don’t remember a single case when other parliamentary factions were ignored in this way,” she said.
Ruben Rubinyan from the ruling bloc, on the other hand stated that the reason for the boycott of the opposition was that the previous composition of the CC was beneficial to them. “We do not want the judges to be politically pleasing and pleasant to us. We want the CC to be truly independent,” he said.
However, some of the deputies of the ruling bloc were also sceptical towards the choice of the judges, stating as arguments that the three new elected judges were linked to the former Armenian authorities in one way or another. The deputy Parliament Speaker Alen Simonyan downplayed such misgivings. “Believe me, no matter whom we nominate there will always be conflicting interests,” he told journalists after the announcement of the parliament vote results.
