Epress.am News from Armenia
Armenian National Congress faction MP Nikol Pashinyan’s draft law “On the Impeachment of Serzh Sargsyan occupying the office of President of the Republic of Armenia” was signed by three MPs, Pashinyan and Heritage Party members Zaruhi Postanjyan and Alexander Arzumanyan, during initial consultations. Pashinyan told journalists today that despite the very few supporters, the draft will remain in circulation and go through the standard protocol through one of the standing committees.
Earlier, the non-ruling parties and members of the political ‘trio’ alliance, Armenian National Congress (HAK) and Prosperous Armenia (BHK) parties, stated that their representatives would not join Pashinyan’s initiative. HAK’s expert and media relations representative Armen Khachatryan’s released statement notes that the trio’s initiated National Movement has still not brought an essential change in the balance of political actors in the National Assembly and “the impeachment process draft is doomed to ingloriously fail and only add to the people’s hopelessness and strengthen the regimes positions.”
In the statement, HAK doubts the reasons behind why Pashinyan “took steps which would be used by the authorities in the intra-political struggle.” The statement notes that the Armenian National Congress faction also considers that in the case of Serzh Sargsyan’s impeachment there must be all the necessary legal-political foundations, which must be ten times more potent than what the MP had presented in his draft bill. The constitutional instrument of impeachment will be used in parallel with the Movement’s expansion, if “such initiatives contribute to the collapse of the regime.”
Prosperous Armenia party’s released statement stressed that “all rational calculations reveal that Pashinyan’s initiative will not gain the 66 (votes) needed in the first stage, and, subsequently, 88 votes in the Parliament. In the current situation, this draft is basically a guaranteed one-step loss, and BHK considers participating useless.”
Speaking of the trio's worries, Pashinyan noted that the same people have come forth with draft bills that were destined to fail on numerous occasions, however, they were still discussed at the National Assembly. Pashinyan gave an example of the HAK faction members' bill on March 1st which was voted down by the ruling Republican party.
The bill on Serzh Sargsyan’s impeachment was also discussed by Republican Party MP Artashes Geghamyan, who spoke in the National Assembly today. According to Geghamyan, the fact that only three MPs backed the impeachment bill reveals the way MPs judge the president’s policies. According to Pashinyan, the MPs have the opportunity to refute Geghamyan’s words.