Opposition MPs will not be stripped of their mandates

YEREVAN, January 23. /ARKA/. The Armenian Parliament’s Council will not ask the country’s Constitutional Court to strip some opposition MPs of their mandates, although they exceeded the permissible number of absences from National Assembly sittings, National Assembly Speaker Alen Simonyan said today, stressing also that after boycotting the sessions, opposition MPs decided eventually to return to the parliament.

On January 13 the Parliament’s Council decided to postpone discussion of this issue. However, the ruling Civil Contract party said it had decided not to appeal to the court on the issue.

The Civil Contract party was going to apply to the Constitutional Court with a proposal to strip 22 opposition MPs from Hayastan alliance of their mandates ‘because of their absence from more than half of the sittings of the parliament.’

For about 7 months (from mid-April to mid-November last year) Hayastan and the other opposition alliance Pativ Unem boycotted the work of the parliament, organizing weekly protests demanding the resignation of the government headed by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.

The opposition accuses the authorities of failing to ensure the security of Armenia and Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh). --0--