Self-dissolution of parliament sought by majority is a 'restart' attempt

YEREVAN, January 28. /ARKA/. Constitutional amendments designed by the ruling My Step parliamentary bloc to make self-dissolution of the Armenian parliament easier and pave the way for fresh parliamentary elections is a 'restart' attempt, which the bloc expects to re-legitimize its power, the director of the Yerevan-based Caucasus Institute Alexander Iskandaryan, said at a press conference on Thursday.

Under Armenia’s constitution early parliamentary elections must be called only if the prime minister steps down and the parliament twice fails to elect another prime minister. Pashinyan's My Step bloc controls 83 seats in the 132-member parliament and can prevent the election of another prime minister nominated by the opposition minority.

Nevertheless, Pashinyan asked earlier this month the two parliamentary opposition parties - the Prosperous Armenia and the Bright Armenia- to promise to refrain from nominating their candidate in the event of his resignation. Both parties refused to do that.

According to Iskandaryan, the proposed amendments is one of the options that early elections may take place. 'The authorities are well aware of the political crisis and their task is to confirm and prolong their legitimacy through snap polls, but in my opinion their task is wrong,” Iskandaryan said.

According to him, the My Step alliance had been shaped in hurry before the 2018 December snap polls and many of its members were included in its list on 'random basis.'

According to Iskandaryan, the authorities are trying to come up with legal tools in order to get around this problem.

“But this is unlikely to work, because legal methods are usually bad for solving political problems. The legal field works well if it lies on some kind of political consensus. There is no political consensus, therefore, the plan will not work and the legitimacy of the ruling elite will not be re-started,” Iskandaryan said.

According to him, the previous authorities left behind 'a brilliant Constitution,' under which gaining some 30% is quite enough to have a majority in the parliament.

“But the reasons for what is happening are not legal, they are political, social and so on, and even if the elections take place and the unrest subsides and the opposition will not gain sufficient strength to prevent the ruling bloc from regaining power, I am still afraid that the legitimacy of the authorities that was before the war will be impossible to restore,” Iskandaryan said. -0-