During yesterday’s plenary session, Parliamentary Assembly of Council of Europe (PACE) adopted Stefan Schennach’s resolution entitled “The progress of the Assembly’s monitoring procedure”. The resolution covers the findings of the monitoring conducted in 2014-2015 in the countries under the monitoring procedure, including Armenia. There is a reference there to the constitutional amendments going on in Armenia, in particular, it calls on the Armenian authorities to hold a referendum in accordance with international standards. According to Clause 12.2 of the Resolution, the Monitoring Committee requires the RA authorities to transparently investigate any allegations of excessive use of force by the police during recent protest against the electricity price hike organized in June 2015.
Note that yesterday, late in the evening by Yerevan time, during the adoption of this resolution, Levon Zurabyan came up with recommendations, in particular, Cause 9 of the preliminary version of the resolution, which was worded as “The efforts of the Armenian authorities in the direction of constitutional reform”. It was eventually passed worded as “initiation of the constitutional reform”, which is mirrored in Clause 10.2 of the final version of the resolution. In other words, the Assembly agreed to eliminate the positive assessment of the RA government’s efforts from the resolution. Clause 11 of the final version, in which the Monitoring Committee expresses its concerns about the countries under the monitoring procedure, there is also one more provision about Armenia. In particular Clause 11.2 stipulates, “the ongoing polarization of the political environment, including over the constitutional reforms.” Note that the resolution was passed by 58 votes “for” and 2 “against” and 1 “abstention” ratio. One of the voters voting “against” was Levon Zurabyan.
Tatev HARUTYUNYAN
