Recently I had a conversation with constitutional law expert Vardan Poghosyan (the interview will be published on our website on Saturday evening), and a question occurred to me: perhaps it should have been explicitly written that “the government (the prime minister), the National Assembly, and the courts have no right to decide who should be the Catholicos of All Armenians, a bishop or a priest; who should head a diocese; or who may be defrocked and who may not.”
This “proposal” of mine stems from the fact that members of the Civil Contract party (including those with legal education) “fail to understand” Article 17 of the Constitution of the Republic of Armenia: “Freedom of activity of religious organizations is guaranteed in the Republic of Armenia. Religious organizations are separate from the state.”
For Civil Contract members, it is apparently unclear what it means to “guarantee freedom” and what “separate” means. Hence, one might need to “spell it out” for them: that this article implies the prime minister, parliament, and courts must not involve themselves in appointing or dismissing the Catholicos or other clergy.
Under normal circumstances, such clarification could have been provided by the Constitutional Court. But since that court, too, is in Pashinyan’s pocket, its interpretation would surely state that everything is perfectly fine. Incidentally, in response to my “proposal,” Vardan Poghosyan said that even writing this explicitly would not help, because Pashinyan would simply say: “Yes, it’s written that way, but since I was elected by the people, I can do whatever I want.”
Indeed, this fits perfectly with the style of the leader of a so-called “bastion of democracy.”
Read also
Another outstanding expert in constitutional law, the late Vladimir Nazaryan, used to say that legislation cannot be drafted on the basis of a presumption of madness. And indeed, it is impossible to write laws or a constitution by calculating what might cross the mind of one deranged despot or another. No law can anticipate a situation in which the head of the executive branch becomes so emboldened by impunity that he considers himself entitled to replace the Catholicos.
Written laws alone are not enough here. A certain level of legal awareness in society is also required. And our citizens, in this respect, do not particularly excel. A few days ago, someone wrote to me claiming that abolishing the institution of military chaplains was the right decision—after all, whose orders are soldiers supposed to follow: the commander’s or the clergyman serving in the army?
That citizen genuinely believed that a chaplain issues commands.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
