It seems there is no lack of lawyers in our country. There are people of that profession in the National Assembly too. Republican Hovhannes Sahakyan who basically says that the government does a great favor to peaceful demonstrators by not using brute (or crude) force against them is a lawyer. Zaruhi Postanjyan who congratulates Raffi Hovhannisyan on being elected as president – how, based on what document – is also a lawyer. And I think that both sides would benefit, if they had an expert in constitutional law of Vladimir Nazaryan’s, aka Rubenich, level who would not only explain the constitutional norms, but also probably hinted at the possible ways out of the current situation.
Naturally, my judgments on these issues will be amateur. However, firstly, it seems to me that Raffi Hovhannisyan, knowing our government’s “inclinations,” should have had 1988 reliable poll-watchers at all polling places, and those poll-watchers would have been able to not only follow the election, but also demand a recalculation and would have strengthened their candidate’s standpoint, even if they had been refused. For the same purposes, the Armenian National Congress (ANC) and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) should have had reliable members of commissions. Now it seems that the opposition is late for certain legal processes.
Secondly, I agree with those people who claim that Raffi Hovhannisyan should file a petition in the Constitutional Court and put forward all the facts about election fraud. By the way, my impression is that those are fewer than those Ter-Petrossian put forward in the Constitutional Court in 2008, and basically it is no coincidence that before that, on March 1, the government attacked peaceful demonstrators, and that court session took place under the conditions of an emergency situation, including strict censorship on the mass media.
Thirdly, as far as I can tell, Armenia is a semi-presidential republic, and the president’s powers in our country are rather limited. Thus, if Raffi Hovhannisyan becomes president, he will have to work either with the Republican majority or, which is more probable, with “rats” who have become Heritage Party members. Or he will have to dissolve the parliament. Therefore, perhaps one should think about that.
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If Rubenich had been around, perhaps he would have offered something more interesting.
ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
