While the President of Armenia and the Republican Party Serzh Sargsyan and the leader of the Prosperous Armenia Party Gagik Tsarukyan are negotiating on whether they should establish a ruling coalition or not and while the parties, which gained parliament seats are deciding the statuses of politicians on their proportional lists, the political field of Armenia builds numerous scenarios and various opinions are being circulated.
The opinions of these two parties to establish coalitions are quite contrasting. According to one of them, Tsarukyan wishes to establish a coalition himself stemming from the risk that he might lose the governmental levers and business and will thus join the group of persecuted businessmen. According to opposite opinions, Tsarukyan has big demands of forming a coalition with Sargsyan up to the point of assuring the Premier’s post for Robert Kocharyan. According to the recent rumors Sargsyan has promised to give the post of the deputy-Premier to the PAP. By the way, he doesn’t mean the replacement of the current deputy-Premier. According to this scenario another post in the government will be created. But this will happen after the elections 2013. This anticipates that the powers of the current deputy-Premier will be divided and a part of those will go under the jurisdiction of the second deputy-Premier. In this case, we encounter a question whether the current constitution and legislation allows the establishment of the institute of the second deputy-Premier. Or does this mean that the government will be willing to even take on an unconstitutional step to suffice the demands of the PAP. By the way, this version wouldn’t be so noteworthy and widespread if the outflow of the information hadn’t come from different camps. It means that there is a big chance that in the governmental elite they have quite a serious opinion about this scenario. Let’s remember that the institute of the deputy-Premier was established in 2007. This was possible after the Constitutional referendum of 2005. Article 85 of the revised constitution reads that one of the ministers can be appointed deputy-Premier with the suggestion of the President. In 2007 the post was given to the minister of territorial administration. At that time the minister was Hovik Abrahamyan. One of the key privileges of this post was that the deputy-Premier can take on the powers of the Premier on the days when the latter is not in the country. And this is stipulated by the constitution. In the event of resignation of the Premier and the government, the deputy may convene government sessions and sign decisions. Besides that, the deputy-Premier or the minister of territorial administration has great powers to influence on the governors, mayors and heads of villages. It means that he can have serious influence nationwide. It is no accident, that back in the day this minister was endowed with crucial powers and essential influence in the cabinet, which made those compatible to the powers of the Premier. As a result of the mentioned changes this ministry was started to be called a “super ministry” and the minister is called a “super minister.” This is the glamour of the post of the deputy-Premier. Perhaps this is connected with the overt desire of Hovik Abrahamyan to become a Premier. It is evident that this post may be very desirable for the PAP too because of the wide powers it offers. By the way, this post provides bigger powers than the post of the NA Speaker, which the PAP is also trying to attain as a condition for joining the coalition. Although the post of the NA Speaker, according to the constitution, is considered the second after the President’s but it mostly has a formal importance. Nonetheless, it is not clear whether the current RA constitution would allow to open a second post for the deputy-Premier or maybe it will be necessary to revise the constitution once again. And this has become a vocal topic during the recent period of time. Let us remember that in the provision of the constitution the post of the deputy-Premier is used in a singular pretext. But does this exclude the establishment of the second post? Yesterday we were not able to get an answer to this question from any relevant state body. Only a lawyer of one of the state bodies, who wished to remain anonymous, stated that according to the RA law on legal acts “singular doesn’t exclude the possibility of the plural.” He also added that this is a delicate issue and requires serious examination. The answer of this question wasn’t found in the comments section of the constitution either. And perhaps the reason of this ambiguity creates rumors that the constitution might be revised again. Of course, if the government initiates the revision of the constitution they will not only resolve the matter of the post of the second deputy-Premier. Indeed, there will be a number of other changes. And it’s not excluded that these changes will be brought up after the presidential elections 2013 in order not to create certain confusion in the society. As of the never-ending PAP-RPA talks, then according to freshest information Sargsyan has promised the PAP two more ministerial portfolios to the existing four. Moreover, they are rumors that the government has added these portfolios not at the expense of the existing 18 portfolios but two more were added. Hey have done a similar thing after the previous elections when they established the ministry of Diaspora, ministry of emergency situations and the ministry of sports. In the past, the last two used to be divisions adjacent to the government but later they turned into ministries to suffice the appetite of the ministers. Now it’s time for distributing positions and sharing the pie. There is a chance that new ministries may be established, for example, ministry of IT technologies, etc. Legislative changes are required for the establishment of new ministries. The last law on that was adopted in June 2008.