“Aravot” says the pro-government majority in Armenia’s parliament should not be blamed for “stubbornly rejecting apolitical specialists” nominated by President Armen Sarkissian for the Constitutional Court and planning to install instead a “political ally” as a member of the court. “The problem lies in the constitution, which essentially enables the ruling political force to have a Constitutional Court subordinate to it,” explains the paper. It is surprised that former officials who enacted that constitution as recently as in 2015 are now complaining about the ruling My Step alliance’s partisanship.
“Zhoghovurd” says that the Constitutional Court chairman, Hrayr Tovmasian, has defied the government following former President Robert Kocharian’s release from jail and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s resulting harsh criticism of the Armenian judiciary. The paper points to Tovmasian’s trip to Nagorno-Karabakh and a media interview in which he hinted that he has no intention to resign and criticized Pashinian’s critical statements on the judicial system. “In other words, he is openly resisting,” it says. “It will be interesting to see how long this resistance will last.”
“The former authorities and their paid and ‘ideological’ supporters are clearly buoyed by ‘velvet’ methods of the revolution and think that with their aggressive propaganda they can erase the people’s memory and even go on a counteroffensive,” writes “Haykakan Zhamanak.” “They think that the closure of streets and the rallies attended by hundreds of thousands of people are the only things that remain in the people’s memory of the April [2018] revolution. They have already forgotten what led the hundreds of thousands of people to take to the streets. Actually they have not. It’s just that the [current] authorities are now busy with more important things and do not remind them of that.”
“Zhamanak” reports that the Special Investigative Service (SIS) has interrogated Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK) leader Gagik Tsarukian in connection with the events of March 2008 in Yerevan. The paper says that an SIS spokeswoman refused to comment on this information. It cites other, unnamed sources saying that Tsarukian’s interrogation lasted for several hours and that he was mainly questioned about his bodyguards’ alleged involvement in the 2008 crackdown.
(Tatevik Lazarian)
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