Ombudsman has applied to the Constitutional court

14/09/2006

Recently RA ombudsman Armen Harutyunyan applied to the Constitutional Court and asked to solve the problem corresponding the RA law on political parties, Article 31, Section 2, Clause 2,3 with the provisions of the RA Constitution, Article 2 and Article 43, Clause 1. The issue that is going to be considered by the court concerns the limit of vote range that is defined for parties to be dissolved. The mentioned letter writes that the limit of the right of citizens to form parties with other citizens and join those parties corresponds with the main purpose of the rights and limits of citizens provided by the RA Constitution, Article 43, Clause 1. According to the law on political parties, parties are dissolved if they have not participated in the last two parliamentary elections or during in either of those elections their electoral lists were given at least 1% of the total number of votes (included those considered as invalid) of parties to take part in elections. The same law also writes that parties may be dissolved if the Constitutional Court stops their work. Taking into account the fact that the number of political powers that usually participate in parliamentary elections in Armenia has not exceeded 30 and there are over 80 parties in Armenia now, we may assume that after the coming parliamentary elections dozen parties may be dissolved on the basis of the mentioned law (these are the laws that are being urged by the ombudsman).