New President, New Constitution
New President
Armen Sarkissian announced his resignation as President of Armenia on January 23. I wrote about the lead up to that decision for EVN Report last week:
The Constitution and the Rules of Procedure for the National Assembly (RPNA) both cover when the office is officially considered to be vacant. The Constitution says that it is vacated immediately upon publication of the resignation “as prescribed by law”. The RPNA provides a one-week grace period in which he can change his mind, making it official only seven days later, once the Speaker of the National Assembly proclaims it. As of today, the decision is final. The new President will be voted on 25-35 days from today.
Armenian media is fickle. One specific outlet made an extrapolation that the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff, Arayik Harutyunyan (same name but different person from the President of Artsakh), would be selected as the next President. Many other outlets piled on to spread that rumor, without trying to independently verify its accuracy. Sometimes, an outlet might actually have a scoop, but very often they are just throwing darts in a quest to draw clicks… and revenue. It makes it difficult to know what is true and what is not.
It has been confirmed that the Civil Contract Party held a caucus meeting today to discuss the issue of who to select as the next President. Minister of High Tech Industry Vahagn Khachaturyan was reportedly discussed as a candidate. Some media are reporting it as a done deal, but only time will tell.
New Constitution
A new process to amend Armenia’s constitution is now well under way. I explained the latest developments in an article published as a Voices From the Field feature on ConstitutionNet, a project of the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA):
https://constitutionnet.org/news/armenias-constitutional-journey-continues
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-Harout