Three bills have been included in the latest fall hearings of the parliament. At first glance these bills seem to concern the fulfillment of the PACE resolution requirements. These bills may be discussed and presented as fulfillment of the PACE requirements, but in fact they are not connected with that resolution at all.
The first one concerns the amendment to the law on rallies, assemblies and demonstrations, which was adopted by first reading during the last session of the parliament. It is worth mentioning that in May the parliament decided to make some small changes to the amended law in order to present it as a step toward the fulfillment of the PACE resolution requirements. These are the minor changes that will be adopted during this session. One of the other two bills concerns creating an ad hoc parliamentary commission on investigating the events of March 1 and the relative results, and the other one concerns amendments to the NA by-laws. Yesterday the parliament discussed the mentioned bill. In fact the four coalition powers are presenting this initiative and bills as efforts targeted at increasing the role of the opposition and fulfilling the PACE resolution requirements. The bill defines the understanding of an “opposition faction”, according to which a faction shall be considered as opposition faction if the leader of the given faction, by the time the parliament adopts the program of the new government, announces in the parliament that they represent the opposition and is not involved in any party or bloc of parties being a part of the government. According to this bill, the opposition shall be entitled to propose an issue which is considered to be priority by them during each second quarter of session. The opposition MPs will also have the priority right to ask questions to the government during Q/A session with the government. Also, opposition MPs will have the right to make announcements out of turn after each pro-government MP, i.e. they are registering in the line of MPs proposing questions but will not have to wait till their turn and opposition MPs will be entitled to ask questions one by one after each pro-government MP. It is not a secret that during sessions pro-government MPs take turns to ask questions in order not to let the opposition have the opportunity to ask questions to the government. Usually such questions are nonsense and are asked only for the purpose of taking time from the opposition. This amendment will solve this problem partially. The bill contains a serious amendment as well, which could help the opposition be more serious in the parliament. Thus, it is suggested to entitle the opposition nominate candidates for positions of faction heads and deputy heads. Currently MPs can nominate candidates. “This provision will give the opportunity to the power represented in the parliament, the opposition inclusively, to distribute the positions of faction heads and deputy heads between each other according to certain rules, which is a sustainable guarantee for small opposition factions to have representatives in faction head and deputy head positions,” said RPA member Davit Harutyunyan, who is one of the supporters and initiators of the bill. However, the initiators of the bill suggest to apply this change not after this quarter but only for the parliament of next convocation. According to Davit Harutyunyan, the reason why the term of application of the draft law is to be prolonged is the fact that this bill may be used by certain powers for their interests. In other words, if they apply this law now, the heads of the factions will be replaced with opposition representatives, which is out of the government’s interests because even now there is lack of positions in the coalition as well.
The only opposition power represented in the parliament, Heritage party, has strictly criticized this bill. They say this bill will not give anything to them and in fact their powers will be limited and the parliamentary opposition will not have effective tools of influence. “In this case the parliamentary opposition will not have tools of a complex control and being an alternative to the government, neither it will have any serious influence on the decisions adopted by the parliament. The only positive thing in this bill is the fact that at least officially it is defined that the parliamentary opposition is a very important factor in the power and it is necessary to enlarge the scope of their powers to the extent of being able to carry out works being an alternative to the government,” says Heritage faction member Armen Martirosyan. Of course this bill doesn’t include the suggestion proposed by Heritage party one week ago to assign some important positions such as positions of factions heads, deputy heads, vice speaker to the opposition and establish a special prosecutor’s institute. D. Harutyunyan says that currently the parliament is not ready to give the vice-speaker’s position to the opposition. He didn’t say anything about the other suggestions. Heritage party is for giving more powers to the opposition and they say it should be done not through making amendments to the NA by-laws but by adopting a separate law on opposition. “You can’t draw the limit of powers in the NA by-laws, which may also include the part of the opposition which is not represented in the parliament. There are other opposition powers which are not represented in the parliament. Through amending the NA by-laws you cannot solve the problems with the head of the controller commission, special prosecutor, the head of the TV and radio commission and the other issues which we have addressed. These are just cosmetic changes and certainly it is another trick to meet the PACE resolution,” said A. Martirosyan. As for the representatives of the governmental coalition, certainly they say that this bill is unprecedented. This bill and the other two bills connected with the fulfillment of the PACE resolution will be discussed and adopted by the parliament during these two days.