Nikol Pashinyan says that a Civil Contract MP will resign his mandate in order to be appointed governor of Kotayk Province. In fact, it does not really matter which Civil Contract MP he is referring to. Whichever MP Nikol Pashinyan told to do so would resign his mandate, even if there were no new appointment. Ultimately, there is still only one “exception” proving this rule — Hovik Aghazaryan, who stubbornly refused to comply with the urging conveyed to him via a WhatsApp message. We then saw what happened to him. For younger male and female MPs, such a prospect is, of course, even more influential.
So, if Nikol Pashinyan has written or said in a voice message that the mandate must be resigned, then it is simply a stroke of good fortune that an appointment to the post of governor will follow. Therefore, there is no need to tempt fate any further. And for the public, all that needs to be recorded is that Armenia de facto has no parliament. For example, it became clear from Nikol Pashinyan’s remarks the day before that Armenia has no judiciary and no law-enforcement system, because Pashinyan, who holds the office of prime minister, urged people to send information about violations and illegalities during local government elections to his email, and said that if they were proven, the guilty party would be punished.
Now it turns out that Armenia also has no parliament, because by decision of the prime minister, a person can resign as an MP — an institution holding the country’s primary representative mandate — in order to be appointed to a position several levels lower. Therefore, if this is the state of affairs, then it is understandable that the same logic applies to legislative work: Prime Minister Pashinyan decides which law should be adopted and which should not even reach the parliamentary chamber. For example, Hayk Sargsyan, a former ruling-party MP and Civil Contract member who recently fell out of favor, said in one of his interviews that there was an unwritten rule in parliament: if the government had not approved a bill, it was not discussed in parliament. In any lawful, democratic country, and especially in a country with a parliamentary system of government, such a statement would cause a political scandal, but not in Armenia. In Armenia, the constitutional order itself is gradually becoming scandalous.
Hakob BADALYAN
