Constitutional Court didn’t recognize all those items of the “NA regulations”, against of which Alexan Haroutiunian was complaining.
It was rather surprising decision, as at least the media weren’t informed that the RA president had turned to the Constitutional Court asking to find out the constitutively of those items of the NA legislation which has become point of dispute between Public Television and National Assembly. Yesterday CC made a decision, according to which it recognized invalid the “NA regulations” law’s last sentence of the third point of 35th article, according to which the parliamentarians could make announcements for about 3 minutes. It also recognized invalid the last sentence of the fourth point of the 35th article, according to which the Prime minister and members of government answer the parliamentarians’ questions. The second point of the 112th article was also refused, according to which NA sittings are put on the live air, and the last sentence of the same article which refers to the broadcasting “Parliamentary Week” TV program on Public TV at 21p.m. on Sunday.
We should remind that Alexan Haroutiunian was persuading the parliamentarians to remove the adoption of announcements, “Parliamentary Hour”, questions and answers from the regulation. NA didn’t admit and now, with the help of CC, was done more than Alexan Haroutiunian was asking. Now the NA must be deprived of radio broadcast. But this isn’t enough. The most important is that the “e” item of the “NA regulations” law’s 49th article was recognized invalid and opposing to the 62nd article of the Constitution, according to which the NA may make a decision about being broadcasted on Public TV recorded or live.
It’s interesting how CC has explained that decision. According to the CC press service’s message: “The Constitutional Court has found that the guarantee of large publicity of the activities of National Assembly, its bodies and parliamentarians, within the framework of nowadays traditional ways, come from the constitutional principles of a legal, democratic state and must be provided by legal and organizational necessary guarantees.”
CC has also noted, “in case of each way of election in the international practice, legal guarantees must be provided not to threaten security of publicity and political views.”
The problem in this situation is that the NA won’t have time to regulate it. There aren’t special sittings any more, and the Public TV may stop broadcasting “Parliamentary Week”.