Andranik Kocharyan Has No Right to Be President of the Investigative Committee: 'Zhoghovurd'

The newspaper 'Zhoghovurd' reports that both the opposition and the ruling power have been vocally insisting on the necessity of establishing an investigative committee to examine the circumstances of the 44-day war immediately after the signing of the November 9 trilateral declaration.

Despite advice and recommendations from opposition members and experts suggesting that it would be more appropriate to form a parity committee, the ruling party remained firm. Through the Speaker of the National Assembly, Alen Simonyan, they announced that the committee would be established based on the relevant parliamentary Defense and Security Committee.

The ruling team does not conceal that the president of the upcoming committee will be Andranik Kocharyan, who, according to information held by 'Zhoghovurd', is personally deciding which representatives from the government’s quota will be included in the investigative committee.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and his allies continuously assert that the investigative committee will be a transcendent entity that will investigate and reveal every detail related to the war, taking on the roles of investigator, judge, and prosecutor themselves. However, they seem to forget that, according to legal norms, a supposed perpetrator does not have the right to scrutinize the allegations made against them.

Andranik Kocharyan, who held a crucial position during the war, will effectively be required to examine not only his own actions but also the actions of his political team and the ensuing mistakes and omissions. This obviously could constrain the official in scrutinizing circumstances in greater detail and comprehensively.

This observation is not directly regulated by legal norms and is more within the political domain, but it allows for the conclusion that the government does not want to concede the presidency of the investigative committee to either the opposition or any other minimally neutral individual.

It is noteworthy that under Kocharyan's leadership, the circumstances of the April Four-Day War had also been investigated. During the works of that committee, several myths beneficial to the government were debunked, particularly claims regarding soldiers being hungry, eating grass, or fighting with shovels. These assertions were directly refuted by the soldiers themselves.

A pressing question arises: how does the government intend to conduct an investigation into the circumstances of the 44-day war when previous experiences showed that the MPs included in the committee, who had almost no military knowledge and did not serve in the army, provided no benefit to the 'April' committee, apart from executing political directives poorly?

For more details, refer to today's issue of the newspaper.