The
version of constitutional amendments of the coalition was adopted yesterday by
first reading. But the authors of refused projects, the ULP and Arshak Sadoyan
declared immediately that they would put their versions in the circulation again.
We didn’t need in any analytic thought to predict a year ago that for what
version of constitutional amendments the RPA, ARF and Orinats Erkir would vote.
The first act of that play was over with the known result and the version of coalition
was adopted by 77 "for" and 8 "against" votes as a ground
for next discussions.Galust Sahakian declared beforehand that they wouldn’t
take part in next discussions respecting it. In general it happened so and the
members of coalition voted either abstentious or didn’t take part in the discussions
of other projects. But there were also exceptions. To the project of ULP group
voted "against" 19 members, 29 members were "abstentious"
and 40 members didn’t vote at all. Sadoyan’s project got 13 "for", 1
"against", 35 "abstentious" votes and 39 didn’t vote at all.
The representative of the president Armen Harotiunian assured in the final speech
that all authors of the projects had honest intentions but the principles real
for the country and adoption to European values are combined in the project of
the coalition more effectively. An appraisal, which will astonish the experts
of the CoE commission of Venice who, had given rather unfavorable appraisals to
the project of the coalition. But the chairman of the temporary commission on
issues of integration to European institutions Tigran Torosian again reminded
in its final speech to the political powers that the most important would be the
quality of the final project so he suggested to pay attention on the project which
was adopted in the first reading. One of the authors of the refused projects Arshak
Sadoyan assured beforehand that there mustn’t be any conversation about mutual
concession as the coalition had refused from the important principles of separation
of authority powers and participation of people in the country government. Arshak
Sadoyan mentioned that he took part in Constitutional discussions opposing to
his colleagues of opposition while they were saying clearly: "it’s all the
same, using the drawn majority they will try to make Armenia to adopt an inadmissible
constitution". He also predicted that no serious amendment would be done
after the first reading and this time the debt of the Armenian citizens would
be to vote against the project of the coalition "formed by inadmissible and
wrong principles".Mr. Sadoyan also mentioned that RPA boycotted the Constitutional
discussions. It became unclear for the co-author of ULP project of the Constitution
Grigor Ghonjeyan that what were the positions of the ULP project, which didn’t
allow to consider it as the best and to adopt it as the base for the further discussions.
Grigor Ghonjeyan informed in his final speech that in case of refusing their project
they would put it into circulation next day. But he also promised that if the
coalition reformed its project ULP would take its version. "Unfortunately
we aren’t sure that it will change as there were 11 months for it". And Arshak
Sadoyan informed us after voting that he would put his version in the circulation
by all means. When the CoE experts come to Armenia in June they will have the
opportunity to mark the projects of both the majority approved and the refused
ones.Anna Israelian