Despite the efforts of the Armenian authorities, the National Assembly wasn’t able to pass the bill on “Alienation of Property for Social and State Needs”. The “Justice”, “National Unity” and “Rule of Law” factions and independent deputies boycotted the voting.
As a result, the ARF, the Armenian Republican Party, the United Labor Party, the “Businessman” and “Popular Deputy” party deputies were only able to come up with 62 votes. MP Arshak Sadoyan counted the number of heads present at the National Assembly that day, analyzed the results of the voting and doubted the number of votes. The bill was put up for voting once again, but the number of votes was still 62. It didn’t pass the first time due to the lack of quorum, but there were some MPs who were voting for their absent colleagues.
This law was supposed to be passed before October 1. The problem is that the Constitutional Court of Armenia had examined the “public needs” filed complaint of the residents of the Buzand streets that lost their homes and had decided that the National Assembly had to pass a law before October 1, which will determine when they can alienate the person’s property. Basically, the decision of the Constitutional Court meant nothing once again.
According to secretary of the “Justice” faction Grigor Harutyunyan, the Armenian authorities did everything they could to pass the law, but failed. It is worth mentioning that a couple of days before the voting, the residents of the Buzand street had organized a demonstration in front of the National Assembly building and demanded voting for the bill.
The ARF and the United Labor Party are throwing the blame on the Republican party because they voted in favor of the bill, but most of the Republican party members were absent that day. “The ARF voted in favor and wanted to see the bill pass, alas it didn’t. It didn’t pass because there weren’t enough MPs,” said vice-speaker of the National Assembly and ARF member Vahan Hovhannisyan. According to him, if the bill doesn’t pass, then “the government will be free to do as it pleases, but if that bill passed, the parliament could have controlled the government.” We asked V. Hovhannisyan what the parliament was going to do when the government had decided that a decision must be made before October 1, to which he replied: “The National Assembly did its best, now it’s up to them.”
I asked MP of the Republican faction Samvel Nikoyan why they weren’t able to get the enough number of members to vote for passing the bill. Nikoyan said that they simply weren’t able to get the needed 66 votes. According to him, the bill will once again be presented to the National Assembly and as for the decision of the CC, which remained a decision once again, Samvel Nikoyan asks for forgiveness to the CC.
It is worth mentioning that the out-of-turn session had been organized in order to pass two bills: first, the bill on “Alienation of Property for Social and State Needs” and the bill on “Reforms in the law on Radio and Television”. After seeing what happened with the first law, Chairman of the National Assembly Tigran Torosyan thought it would be appropriate to pass the second law later.