Armenia Needs a New Constitution Approved by the People, Says Pashinyan

On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Constitution of the Republic of Armenia, a festive event was held at the Alexander Spendiaryan National Academic Theater of Opera and Ballet. The event was attended by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, President Vahagn Khachaturyan, President of the Constitutional Court Arman Dilanyan, representatives from legislative and executive bodies, and heads of diplomatic missions of foreign states accredited in Armenia.

In his congratulatory remarks on Constitution Day and the 30th anniversary, the Prime Minister presented the ideology of Real Armenia. He reflected on how the theme of the Constitution has intersected with the ideology of Real Armenia over the past year. According to the country's leader, it has become clear that the ideology of Real Armenia cannot be fully understood without addressing the issue of the Constitution, as these themes are directly related and intertwined with each other.

“This relates to the slogan ‘The homeland is the state; if you love your homeland, strengthen your state,’ and this slogan is connected to our people’s 500-year history. Why do I say all this in connection with Constitution Day? For 500 years, loving our homeland while sometimes even hating the state, is it possible that our civic subconscious has not overcome the instinct of resisting the state while loving the homeland? In discussions, I have become convinced that resistance to the state has become an acquired reflex for us and we have a problem to overcome,” Pashinyan noted.

According to the Prime Minister, the legal order established in Armenia over the past 35 years is still perceived by the people as something determined by others without their participation. “The Constitution, in my understanding, is a mutual agreement among citizens regarding relationships within the country—citizen to citizen, citizen to community, community to government, and generally, the agreement surrounding the rule of law in the country, which should be expressed in the Constitution. Confronting the issue of why our citizens do not feel a sense of belonging to this legal order, I have reached a well-known but unvoiced conclusion that our current Constitutions, starting from 1995, at least raise questions about whether they were adopted through the people’s free expression and free voting. At the very least, this is a question with an ambiguous answer,” he emphasized.

The founding law of the legal order is the people. No matter how golden the Constitution we write, without the undeniable, unarguable results of the people's free expression and referendum, this perception of the homeland as a platform for resisting the state will continue. And what is the solution? The solution is as follows: Armenia needs a new Constitution approved by the people so that the people consider the Constitution to be theirs, a kin, the rule under which they live in their homeland-state,” Pashinyan stated.

He also added that Armenia needs a new Constitution that should have a specific purpose, expressing the reality that already exists in the Republic of Armenia. “This reality is as follows: the Republic of Armenia tells its citizens that the homeland and the state are no longer identical. However, unlike our previous historical periods, the message should be very clear, and the tangible expression of that message should be a new Constitution adopted by the free expression of the people of Armenia. And that Constitution should say: ‘Citizen of the Republic of Armenia, you are the state, you are the Republic of Armenia.’