The Constitution Referendum of the Republic of Nagorno Karabagh will take place on December 10. According to head of the Central Electoral Commission of Karabagh Sergey Nasibyan, the government has provided 36 million drams for the referendum. The voters’ lists are ready and the final draft of the Karabagh Constitution will be printed soon and will be given to the electoral commissions. The Constitution brochures have already been printed in more than a thousand copies and will be dispersed throughout the republic.
Let’s not forget to mention that recently, during the second reading of the Constitution draft at the Karabagh National Assembly, member of the “ARF-Movement ‘88” faction Gegham Baghdasaryan had voted “neutral” for the draft. He reasons: “From the beginning, I didn’t “doubt” the Constitution as much as I doubted the whole process of approving the Constitution, which I think didn’t really correspond to the way that a significant document like this should have been approved. The Constitution is the mutual agreement between the country’s citizens to organize their lives. The Constitution must be accepted by all in order for it to be approved. But we need time and the opportunity for that. It’s becoming a bad tradition in Karabagh to approve significant documents without asking the public for its opinion. We did the same thing with reforms in the educational system and now we’re doing that for the most significant document of the country…My purpose was to attract the people’s attention to the manner of working, which is prohibited. I mean the parliament, better yet, the heads of the parliament and how they approve this or that document. It was senseless to put the document up for a public vote after the first reading because it wasn’t clear as to how the new proposals were going to be added to the draft. The constitution draft hasn’t even been discussed through a special process, which should have been the way to do things for this very significant document.”
According to G. Baghdasaryan, people now have a rather bad impression of the Karabagh parliament and what kind of role it plays. “It turns out that the National Assembly was going along with the pace of the work group leader (chief prosecutor); his opinion was decisive during the sessions and when it came time to deciding how to run things. All the parliamentarians were waiting impatiently to see if Mr. Zalinyan would make it “until 2:00 p.m. the day after tomorrow” to correct the errors, or not. We even discussed a “corrected” version of the draft, but we didn’t get to see it. We didn’t understand why everyone wa rushing and why they weren’t ready to discuss the main disagreements during the second reading. You would get the impression that there were other important issues to discuss besides the constitution draft that they didn’t’ want to speak out in the open. The strangest thing is that this was being done at the same time when they guaranteed to increase the role of the parliament of Karabagh. Meanwhile, even the creation of a professional parliament was somehow included in the constitution draft,” said G. Baghdasaryan.
G. Baghdasaryan says that Karabagh could have had a better constitution. “However, the fact that the newly independent country is finally going to have a Constitution is a phenomenon and no cast “shade” can play a decisive role here. The Constitution is a great value both in the country’s internal affairs and relations with other countries. This is the main point. I am certain that Karabagh can maintain development even with the current draft. There are some clauses of the constitution that signal progress and the Constitution can help instill democracy in the country, if there is a public demand and the will of the people-psychology of organization, mechanisms and contacts, and if the people can control the work of the authorities, which is the essence of democracy. These are the important things. If we have the abovementioned, then everything will be fine; if not, then no constitution will help, even the most ideal. If the people want to stand up for their country and play a role in determining the destiny, nothing can come against them.”