The former executive director of Armenian Public Radio has decided to sue a state broadcasting watchdog that effectively fired him after he criticized Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan early this year.
Garegin Khumaryan said on Thursday that he will ask Armenia’s Administrative Court to invalidate the outcome of last month’s purported job contest that formalized his replacement by RFE/RL journalist Armen Koloyan.
“Whoever decides to appeal against that contest is simply doomed to victory because the way, the procedure, the philosophy by which the contest was held contradicts all possible and impossible norms, and it will be very easy to prove that in the court,” he said.
Khumaryan’s five-year contract with the radio expired in April two months after he publicly disagreed with Pashinyan’s comments on the conflict with Azerbaijan. The premier, he said, told citizens to “stop being Armenians,” rather than “get stronger,” in the face of existential threats from Azerbaijan.
Read also
Armenia’s Council of Public Broadcaster, which appoints the heads of state television and radio, accused Khumaryan of expressing his personal view on the Public Radio website in an “arbitrary” and “unchallenged” way. Accordingly, it did not exercise a legal option of extending Khumaryan’s contract by two years and decided instead to choose a new Public Radio chief on a supposedly competitive basis.
Khumaryan was among eight candidates who participated in the resulting contest. Earlier in July, he claimed that the contest has already been rigged because the Council of Public Broadcaster will execute a government order to appoint Koloyan, the candidate deemed loyal to Pashinyan.
Khumaryan claimed that most of the council members should not have handpicked the new radio chief in the first place because of serious conflicts of interest. They are linked to Pashinyan’s Civil Contract “in one way or another,” he said.
Another defeated contender, veteran journalist Lusine Petrosian, is also challenging the legality of the selection process, having already filed a lawsuit. She insisted on Thursday that the process was illegal, unfair and politically motivated.
The council chairman, Ara Shirinian, denied such claims earlier this month.
