Asked how he treats Levon Ter-Petrossian’s overview implying that requiring MPs to leave their mandates is against the Constitution, Armen Rustamyan replied: “He has a right to express his opinion. Yes, the MP has a right to be guided by his conscience and belief, but this is the Armenian Revolutionary Federation. We have our customs, we do not make a decision against the Constitution, the MP renounces by his own will. This is a Federation with which no one can play games. So many great people have been expelled from the party.”
Within the current citation, Rustamyan has recorded a few essential points.
The first: “Ter-Petrossian has a right to express his overview.” Supposedly, this means that I should be grateful to the Federation for open-heartedly granting me my own constitutional right of a citizen.
The second: “Yes, the MP has a right to be guided by his own conscious and belief.”
Here the Federation open-heartedly grants the MP to use his own constitutional right.
Third: “We have our customs, we do not make a decision against the Constitution, the MP renounces by himself. This is the Federation, with which no one can play games. So many great people have been expelled from this party.”
That is, the Constitution is a Condition, but it does not matter to them, inasmuch as they are the Federation, which is guided by not the Constitution, but rather by its own customs and charter.
In brief, for the Armenian Revolutionary Federation their charter stands above the Constitution of Armenia, one of the initiators and encouragers of which was the Federation itself and appeared in the Parliament under the rules of procedure stipulated in that very Constitution.
If more simplified, the Constitution does not matter to the Federation. By the way, the same refers also to the Republican Party because of the similar behavior of imposing on its MPs to renounce the mandate.
Although I mentioned in my previous overview, that the question I have raised may seem a minor issue at the current phase of the stormy events in Armenia, I continue insisting that it is not a minor issue at all, but rather an important condition for the sustaining of a legal state.