Petrosyan: Justifications for Terminating the Powers of the Constitutional Court President Are Insufficient

The legal outlook for the proposal to terminate Hrayr Tovmasyan’s powers as President of the Constitutional Court is unclear, and the justifications are insufficient.

This was stated by Gevorg Petrosyan, a member of the Prosperous Armenia faction, in an interview with reporters in the National Assembly, when asked why they would not participate in the initiative by the My Step faction to terminate Hrayr Tovmasyan’s powers.

Regarding the My Step faction leader’s comment that the decision of Prosperous Armenia is political, Petrosyan said it is not political and that there is no issue of being connected to any individual or force by different threads.

“Together with our experts and lawyer deputies, we have studied the issue and we are of the opinion that the legal justifications are insufficient, therefore we do not consider it appropriate to participate in a process whose legal outlook is unpredictable for us. Additionally, according to the current legislation of Armenia, that decision is made by the Constitutional Court. That is, the National Assembly does not decide to terminate the powers of a member or the president of the Constitutional Court; it is exclusively reserved for the Constitutional Court,” noted Gevorg Petrosyan.

When asked whether there is any legal justification in the document presented by My Step, the Prosperous Armenia deputy responded, “If I were to say now that there is no legal justification, it would mean that I am mocking the lawyers who drafted it. But those justifications have not been convincing enough for us to find it sufficient to join that initiative.”

The Prosperous Armenia deputy emphasized that they have no problem defending Hrayr Tovmasyan, the president of the Constitutional Court. “We voted against the president of the Constitutional Court at the time. We have no issue defending him; if we had, we would have the courage to say so. But this is not a personal issue; this is an institutional issue. The legal outlook must be predictable,” highlighted Gevorg Petrosyan.