The human rights defender about the constitutional amendments
Human rights defender Artak Zeynalyan continues to insist that the draft of the constitutional amendments is a new Constitution. The changes are both technical and contextual. According to him, the sequence of articles, the places and positions are changed, which, according to the law on legislative technique, is already a feature of a new Constitution. He brings the example of Articles 1 and 2 of the Constitution, which are not changed in the new one, and also mentions Article 114, which guarantees the irreplaceability of the aforementioned three Articles. “It is not right to make changes in Article 114 and say that Articles 1, 2 and 114 are unchangeable, – says Mr. Zeynalyan and notes that the submitted draft is different from the Constitution, – This is how it should go: declare the Constitution (with the amendments in 2005) adopted in 1995 cancelled. This is a new Constitution also in terms of morphology and content. A very serious thing has been changed – the concept. If in the current Constitution the restrictions were described in one Article, here, each right has its boundaries and restrictions. This is another feature of the new Constitution. Change in the governance system is also one of the features of the new Constitution.”
The human rights defender, speaking about the Constitution, says that it is difficult to use a document where various Articles are already declared cancelled, there are prim Articles, but it is much more complicated to use the old document with new editing. “Serious legal certainty and law enforcement problems arise,” he says and adds that they have to constantly solve the problem of explaining the application of the law to the public. Mr. Zeynalyan does not see any public interest in the Constitutional reforms and believes that special polls should be conducted to actually find out people’s opinion, because there is a problem to understand of whether the vast majority of our society still continues remaining indifferent to this process. He thinks that, anyway, the choice will be just like in many other countries. The voting will reflect the public attitude to the local authorities.
The human rights defender notes and points out that some Articles in the draft of the Constitutional reforms regarding the human rights are regressive. “There are things that are added, but it is not the case that the current Constitution is providing less guarantees in terms of human rights protection, simply they were not implemented. For example, the respect for private life, property rights, the right to peaceful assemblies that are problematic are regressive in the draft. However, I cannot say that the section on judicial system is better, surely, it needs further improvement,” he says.
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Our interlocutor noted that if our local authorities are willing to prove to the public that making constitutional amendments generates from genuine aspirations, they should publish the voting lists, otherwise we can assume that it would be the same that happened in 2005. And as to the expected future of the progress of these processes, whether there will be a referendum or not, and what voting results will be, Mr. Zeynalyan says, “We do not need to imagine. We have a fact – the referendum in 2005; what a turnout was showed in the empty polling stations. We already have many similar facts. We do have it, yeh, now, in order to show that it will not be rigged, the beginning should not start with frauds. They should promise to publish the lists and will not cheat the good work that they want to do, no cheating.”
HRIPSIME HOVHANNISYAN,
“Aravot” daily
