“The Constitutional Court, as well as any court of the Republic of Armenia, acts at the dictation of the government,” Vardan Harutyunyan, a human rights advocate and the head of the Rights and Freedom Center NGO, told us when asked whether the arguments included in the ruling made on the petitions filed by candidates for president R. Hovhannisyan and A. Ghukasyan were grounded. Let us mention that the Constitutional Court’s ruling mentioned also the fact that there was an opportunity to attach dissenting opinions to the records that had been made or to avoid agreeing with the results by not signing them immediately after the election results had been summarized; however, that opportunity was not seized, and there were only few cases of challenging the results. According to G. Harutyunyan, the Court couldn’t grant the motions filed by R. Hovhannisyan’s representatives. According to him, the party was just trying to make impression by that that the Constitutional Court didn’t wish to grant them. “The current post-election situation in our country cannot be considered within the scope of legal proceedings,” G. Harutyunyan stated. Vardan Harutyunyan noted during a conversation with us that they had filed petitions in the Constitutional Court at the end of all elections in the Republic of Armenia, and the Constitutional Court had always made rulings that the government had dictated to it. V. Harutyunyan stated: “They have willingly taken on the role of the counsel for the government and play it. They did the same thing in 2008, also in 2003; it is the same today too. Therefore, it is not so appropriate to seriously discuss their decision.” In response to our observation that the government representatives also gave the example of 2008, but in order to state that the petition at that time was much richer with facts than R. Hovhannisyan’s one. Mr. Harutyunyan said in that regard: “My comparison was just to show another episode in the Constitutional Court’s biography that they had made a disgraceful ruling. They made a
decision disgraceful for each member of the Constitutional Court. If they also mention the year 2008, then it is funny. Undoubtedly, this is also one of those disgraceful decisions. Unfortunately, not only can’t the courts in our country act independently, but they cannot feel independent either. Whereas they look forward to listening to what the government will say, based on which they will make a ruling. At the end of the day, one of the Constitutional Court members expressed his opinion on the year 2008, and WikiLeaks made it public.” Hovik Arsenyan, an attorney at law, stated that he was under the impression that the Constitutional Court members didn’t live in this country, didn’t know, heard for the first time; they just considered whether there was a fact or not, whether there were grounds or not. He reminded that we had never seen the Constitutional Court make a positive ruling when there had been a discussion or a complaint as a result of national elections. Coming back to R. Hovhannisyan’s petition, Mr. Arsenyan stated: “One must also agree that his campaign headquarters should have known in advance, since it was well-known that there would be election fraud, and should have been ready to make respective records during the election and shouldn’t have given an explanation that they hadn’t had enough time. They should have ensured that. The legislation requires that. It wasn’t done; anyway, it is no secret to every member of society what the situation was like. However, the steps and actions should have been taken, in accordance with the legislation. Let us admit that there was election fraud, but saying only is not enough, respective complaints should have been made, they should have been informed in time. We should be a bit objective in that regard, not just say that they fell victim to the government. I wish all that had been there, and then we would have said that we didn’t have even constitutional justice.”
Tatev HARUTYUNYAN
