The preliminary examination of the lawsuit filed in by former rector of Yerevan State Linguistic University after V. Brusov Suren Zolyan against Armen Ashotyan, the Minister of Education and Science of the Republic of Armenia, presided by Ruben Apiyan, a judge of the law court of Kentron and Nork-Marash administrative districts, continued today.
The sides should put forward their additional proofs before the trial officially commences, particularly, no. 134 employment contract signed by the petitioning rector and the government of the Republic of Armenia, also the documents that were related to questioning the activities of the rector as a member of the Committee of Experts of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.
The defendant should put forward explanations, according to which Minister Armen Ashotyan had the right to fire an independent expert who was also the rector of one of the universities.
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Suren Zolyan informed the court that during the latest meeting in Strasburg a week before, in which he, the representative of Armenia had not participated, it was noted that “in this case the government of Armenia groundlessly interfered in the activities of an expert.”
It was also noted that such impeding “is sometimes unacceptable from the political perspective,” moreover, “political pressure is impermissible.”
The defendant, lawyers of the Ministry of Education and Science, tried to prove to the court that since S. Zolyan was a rector, he should have informed the minister about the activities of a rector and/or its absence. The judge even noted that the representatives of the Ministry
of Education and Science thought in the old Soviet manner and reminded once again that the rector had been elected and the government had given an instruction to the minister to approve the results of the election.
And the defendant remarked that Zolyan’s employment record book was not in his Strasburg office.
The question in which case the rector could have appointed someone as acting rector was followed by the following funny dialogue with participation of the judge and the lawyers of the Ministry of Education and Science.
Judge: Could an appointed man have given an order, if he had been dead?
Lawyer of the Ministry: God forbid, no.
* Zolyan, don’t take this personally, could he have given an order, if he had been arrested?
* No.
* Could he have written a note from Dubai…?
* He couldn’t. Absence is that he was absent from Armenia.
* Temporarily.
* It doesn’t matter, he was absent….
The next court session is due to take place on June 18. The petitioner and the defendant should bring the orders, which were given by the minister to the rector about the business trip. Although the judge expressed concerns that since the former rector couldn’t enter the university, might be denied access to the necessary documentation, thus, he required the same thing of the defendant.
Let us remind that the petitioning rector demands that the orders of the minister to inflict a disciplinary action and to fire him are found void and he gets back his former job.
Ruzan MINASYAN
