Again on the Constitutional Court Crisis: Vahe Grigoryan

The judge of the Constitutional Court, Vahe Grigoryan, has presented the first substantive part of his series on the crisis of the Constitutional Court.

The ban on the publication of voter signature lists. The greenhouse of electoral fraud constructed by the Constitutional Court. Before addressing the material of this section, it must be noted that electoral disputes are multifaceted and complex processes arising from various types of relationships among citizens, political parties, civil society organizations, and state and local self-government bodies regarding elections. Therefore, the observations and assessments concerning electoral disputes and their resolutions have been presented exclusively in relation to the Constitutional Court as a distinct part of the overall picture, which includes, as much as possible, the description of other factors influencing (anti)democratic processes in Armenia.

In general, expecting the effective realization of the people's sovereignty provided for in Article 2 of the Constitution from the Constitutional Court alone is an illusion. Even if the Constitutional Court could provide the highest possible quality of justice with its professional capacity and authority, the protection of a stable and viable democracy would be impossible without sufficient diligence from the executive and legislative authorities in ensuring citizens' rights to free choice.

At the same time, Armenia's experience over the last at least 16 years has demonstrated that the distortion of citizens' rights to free choice and the reduction of democracy could not have been continuous had the anti-democratic-leaning authorities not had the “permission” of the Constitutional Court in this matter. From the opposing perspective, the reduction of democracy and the annihilation of the right to free choice is guaranteed to be possible for any authority if it has the cooperation of the Constitutional Court in this regard.

Below, regarding the ban on the publication of signed lists, is a description of the implementation, operation, cessation of the most dangerous electoral fraud scheme in Armenia resulting from the cooperation between the political authorities and the Constitutional Court between 2003 and 2016, and its consequences. At the end of the material, the role of the Constitutional Court is recorded.

Before proceeding to the actual material, for clarification, let us note that with the passive position of the Constitutional Court in electoral disputes, and in some cases its own initiative, the manifestations of the failure to protect electoral institutions from political authority can be categorized into two: (a) the establishment of the ban on the publication of signed voter lists during elections and referendums, and (b) the systematic (self)limitation of its constitutional authority in resolving electoral disputes.

For any ruling elite willing to use anti-democratic tendencies and the same means, with minimal organization, each of these two manifestations was sufficient for them to achieve a perfect distortion of the right to free choice in Armenia and, in fact, annihilate the constitutional order provided for in Article 2 of the Constitution concerning the realization of people's sovereignty.

This publication will only address the first manifestation mentioned above—the secrecy of signed voter lists and the open and effectively organized cooperation with the current political authorities.

The next publication will deal with the encouragement of arbitrariness through the passive position of the Constitutional Court in electoral disputes.