First of all they have made a decision not to participate in any discussions concerning the Constitution. But today the deputy president of the party board announced that there are several provisions in the draft and these are enough not to vote for it. The main goal of the opposition is to make the voters sure during the campaign that they should vote “no” for the draft. Otherwise the authorities will make violations during the referendum which will be fatal for our country.
“The authorities were trying to create an environment where everybody will vote “yes”. They were doing this with the help of some oppositionists. But of course they couldn’t. Now they use another technology. They try to make voters sure that this draft is excellent and is better than the existing Constitution and that since the opposition is against the authorities, they are against the Constitution too. But on the contrary, the situation is not like this. Of course we are not going to vote for the Constitution also because of the fact that people who were elected by violating the law don’t have the right to bring up a new draft. Besides that, we are against this draft because it’s political, juridical and the language is not clear”, – said A.Hovakimyan. According to him this draft is not an amended Constitution, but rather it is a new Constitution. “If you pay attention to the article about juridical acts you will see that the changes in juridical acts are different. They gave us an article and said that they had changed these concrete things in that article. But the Constitution is different”, – said Mr. Hovakimyan. Mr. Hovakimyan is sure that in the result of this process RA president Robert Kocharyan will have a chance to be nominated for the president for another two years.
Tales for old people
Andranik Hovakimyan said that there were a lot of shortcomings in that draft but he wanted to point out only two of them: the article about dual citizenship and the article about making Constitutional changes. “This provision about dual citizenship creates two groups of citizens. One group consists of citizens living in Armenia: they have rights and responsibilities. And the other group consists of people who have dual citizenship. The citizens of this group have only rights, but no responsibilities. They have a right to vote too”, – said A.Hovakimyan. As a result of this the citizens of Armenia will lose their chance to form a government themselves because there are more Armenians living abroad. And their votes will determine the outcome of elections. A.Hovakimyan doesn’t believe the authorities when they say that they are sure that they will define in that law that only local citizens have a right to elect and to be elected. “These assurances are just tales, and I don’t believe them. In 1998 Kocharyan said that he would never be nominated, because this would be a violation of the law, but he did it in one week”, – reminded Mr. Hovakimyan.
The Constitution will solve the problem of Meghri
The second reason Mr. Hovakimyan is not going to vote for the constitution is the provision, according to which the president can make suggestions on border changes and the NA can change the borders of the country. Mr. Hovakimyan is assured that the issue of Meghri is still included in the agenda of the Karabakh conflict regulations. According to Mr. Hovakimyan this provision is included in the draft so the president can give some territories under the pressure of the international community and later throw the blame on the NA. Moreover, experience has shown that usually such people are elected in the NA, who are ready to press any button in favor of Kocharyan. “Till now these authorities have violated all the elections and the international community forgave them only with the purpose to pressure them any time they want and reach their goals. And now I am sure that this is done with the purposes to give Armenian territories later”, – said Mr. Hovakimyan. Of course the authorities can justify this action by saying that this was done with the purposes to enlarge our territories later (some governmental parties still dream of having “Armenia from sea to sea”). Mr. Hovakimyan thinks that the Constitutional Draft must not include clauses that are suspicious. “The problem is that the Constitution must not contain provisions which can be interpreted in different ways. No one is sure whether these people will be the ruling power in several years or not. Even if we agree that this draft is written in the best way, we can’t be sure that other ruling powers will do the same later. They may do something different in the future”, -said Mr. Hovakimyan.