Standing Committee on State and Legal Affairs Chair Davit Harutyunyan, who put into circulation the draft law to establish an ethics committee in parliament, in an interview with local daily Joghovurd yesterday, declared that the article in the Constitution that prohibits Members of Parliament from owning or engaging in business is a “post-socialist phenomenon” and any democratic country, as a rule, doesn’t speak about it.
With this statement, Harutyunyan is setting up grounds to not exclude the entry of some businessmen in parliament into the next National Assembly plenary session, writes Joghovurd, unlike former RA Minister of Justice Gevorg Danielyan, who becoming acquainted with the Armenian National Congress’ well-known document on the parliament’s illegitimacy, where there was a list of 76 MPs who are engaged in business, speaking to the print press, had said they could even be sentenced for violating the Constitution.