“First of all, they are constrained by the Constitution. The Constitution does not allow this. Abolition of that decision does not in any way free them from being constrained by the Constitution,” constitutionalist Vardan Poghosyan answered the question of Aravot.am: from a legal point of view, are the representatives of the current government not constrained by the decision of the Supreme Council (SC) of 1992? It should be noted that many of the representatives of the ruling power, defending RA Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s views on Artsakh, declare that the decision of the Supreme Council of July 8, 1992, is just a decision of the parliament and they are not bound by it.
Vardan Poghosyan emphasizes that it is essential to understand the following from the point of view of the law. “Imagine if we didn’t have such provisions in the Constitution, such provisions in the Declaration of Independence, if there was only one decision of the Supreme Council that was not based on the constitutional basis when it was adopted exclusively on the Declaration of Independence, then today’s National Assembly could say that is abolishing the 1992- that decision of the Central Committee of July 8. But he is constrained by the Constitution and has no right to it.”
Vardan Poghosyan claims it is a constraining circumstance, “The decision of the National Assembly is a legal act; I hope that no one can raise any objection to this Constitution. If not revoked, a legal action remains in effect until it is abolished unless it is a single-use act. There is a legal act, for example, appointing someone to a position. While appointed, its action extends until that person continues his job. I brought this up just for comparison. The decision adopted by the Supreme Council, the Parliament of Armenia, is valid until it is abolished or until it loses its effect automatically over time. It is neither the first nor the second case.
But let’s consider something more substantial. Apart from the fact that the legal act of July 8, 1992, was not recognized as invalid, that act cannot be recognized as such because recognizing it as not valid would violate the RA Constitution. In other words, the act of July 8, 1992, is derived from the Declaration of Independence of Armenia and the Constitution of the Republic of Armenia because when adopting the Declaration of Independence of the Republic of Armenia as the basis for its adoption, the Supreme Council accepted the decision regarding the reunification of Artsakh and the Republic of Armenia on December 1, 1989. That decision is valid in that it fixed the wish of the Armenian people for the reunification of two separate, divided parts and formulated this wish and goal as a nationwide goal in the preamble of the RA Constitution.
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In the preamble of the RA Constitution, there is a reference to the Declaration of Independence of Armenia, the Declaration of August 23, 1990.
From the point of view of the Constitution, it is essential in two ways. The first is that the Declaration of Independence of August 23, 1990, confirmed the fundamental principles of Armenian statehood, they were fixed in the Constitution in the Fundamentals of the Constitutional Order chapter, particularly in the first, second, third, and other articles, and secondly, the Declaration of Independence also defined the nationwide goals that should be that RA will consistently implement, be compelling for the authorities of RA to pursue national goals.
Those nationwide goals are fixed in the Declaration of Independence, and one of those goals is the aspiration and desire for the reunification of Armenia and Artsakh. It is also fixed at the beginning of that decision of December 1, 1989. So, from the point of view of RA constitutional law, the goal of the reunification of Artsakh and RA is at the highest level, at the constitutional level, and the decision of the Supreme Council of 1992 only implements and introduces a particular specification about the goal of that reunification. In particular, the decision of July 8, 1992, directly prohibits the RA authorities from taking such actions that would cast doubt on the existence of Nagorno-Karabakh. That decision directly states that any international or domestic document in which Artsakh is mentioned as part of Azerbaijan should be considered unacceptable.
Tatev HARUTYUNYAN
