“Especially after the 44-day war, the discourse of constitutional changes, or rather the change of the system of government, has become significantly more active in public political life,” said Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan when presenting the government program in parliament, noting that the presentation of the plan began from one of those final subsections.
It should be noted, however, that there is no line or phrase in the government’s program about constitutional changes, especially the transition to a presidential or semi-presidential system of government. In his speech, Pashinyan said that many people concluded that the war and its results showed the inadequacy of the parliamentary system of government for a country in such a security environment, and according to that conclusion, we should return to the presidential or semi-presidential system. Pashinyan said that such allegations could not be considered openly.
“But the question arises whether the mechanism of overcoming the atmosphere of public political unrest through elections would work in the same way in the case of presidential or semi-presidential systems of government. It is true that we should not talk about history with “ifs,” but I must dare to assume that the history of the Third Republic might have developed differently if there was an opportunity to hold snap elections in 1998 with the 2021 scenario.
In 1998, when the incumbent president resigned, it was a defeat for his proposed political discourse and, in effect, a departure from domestic politics. The problem is not this phenomenon itself, but that it happened without the people, without real public discussion, and the Nagorno Karabakh issue was removed from the field of public political discussions. It moved from the theoremic genre to the axiomatic genre, which caused significant problems for our country. Those problems were and are practical.”
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Nelly Babayan
