The I Have Honor alliance will be appealing to the Constitutional Court to recognize the election results as invalid. In response to Aravot Daily’s question during an interview about whether other forces that participated in the election will be joining their appeal, or if they will be appealing on their own, the press secretary of the Hayrenik political party, Sos Hakobyan, responded that In general, the political forces work on a separate process in terms of collecting election violations and legal equipment, and they will apply to the Constitutional Court separately, but if the Constitutional Court will investigate the case all together or separately is just a matter of technicality.
Sos Hakobyan provided details on what kind of violations the appeal was prepared based on. “These are mainly the violations that we have talked about publicly, starting with the misuse of administrative resources, when the acting prime minister continued to exercise the powers vested in the head of government during the elections while continuing to have those powers.
He called for violence, hate speech, and just a message to the entire state and community apparatus, in fact, to carry out bureaucratic abuses, both in terms of bringing people to rallies, directing people, and disrupting the equal and fair course of elections, and in terms of intimidation, sowing an atmosphere of fear. You have also witnessed that the members of the I Have Honor alliance have been clearly and consistently politically persecuted. Many people have been arrested or simply isolated on election day, some of whom have already been released based on the recognition that their deprivation of liberty is illegal, while others are being defended by lawyers.”
Read also
When asked about how they have already spoken about those violations, but the CEC has turned a blind eye to it and did not consider it a violation that affected the election results, so what do they expect from the Constitutional Court now, Sos Hakobyan answered. “The CEC is an administrative body, the Constitutional Court is a court and, naturally, the requirements and expectations are much higher and stricter towards higher courts.
We believe that during the trial, the Constitutional Court will truly keep the backbone of the rule of law and act as a defender of the constitution.” Aravot Daily also asked if they expect that the other forces participating in the elections will also add the violations they have collected to the appeal to go to court with stronger arguments, or if the one appeal is enough, Sos Hakobyan answered. “Of course, it is good if any opposition force that has registered violations presents them to the Constitutional Court at the moment, as the administrative part is exhausted. But the I Have Honor alliance, regardless of everything and everyone, will carry out its separate process, from fixing election violations to appealing the results. Our behavior does not depend on the action of any other force. We have independence.”
Upon the observation that the head of the Bright Armenia party Edmon Marukyan said that when they announce that they are taking the mandates, then they accept the election results, as the Armenia alliance stated, for example, Sos Hakobyan answered, “We did not announce the withdrawal of mandates. We simply stated that there is no legal consequence of not taking the mandates. There is a legal dispute, but there is no clarity that not taking the mandates can lead to a crisis. In this case, if there is no change as a result of the decision of the Constitutional Court, we think it will be more effective to continue our work by accepting the mandates. But such a decision can be made only after the legal process is frozen.”
Hripsime Jebejyan
