One of those lawmakers, Arpi Davoyan, failed to convince the party’s governing board to approve her candidacy for the vacant post during an October 9 meeting chaired by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.
The board was due to meet again on Tuesday for further discussions on Minasian’s potential replacements. The meeting was cancelled at the last minute, with media reports saying Pashinian is still undecided about whom to appoint as new justice minister.
Sources told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that the new candidates considered for the job are Pashinian’s press secretary Nazeli Baghdasarian, senior Civil Contract parliamentarian Armen Khachatrian, Yerevan’s Deputy Mayor Suren Grigorian and lawyer Aleksandr Sirunian.
Baghdasarian did not return phone calls while Grigorian refused to comment on Friday. The two other candidates confirmed their desire to take up the ministerial post. Khachatrian, who also called for Minasian’s ouster, said he sees the need for “institutional changes” in Armenia’s judicial system.
“We need to increase the authority of courts a lot in order to have the kind of justice which we want,” the former traffic police officer told journalists. He did not say just how he would try to do that.
Minasian is as a close friend of Karen Andreasian, a Pashinian ally heading the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC), a powerful body overseeing Armenian courts. The two men have been accused by opposition leaders and some legal experts of executing Pashinian’s orders to curb judicial independence in the country under the guise of Western-backed “judicial reforms” regularly touted by the ruling party.
The number of disciplinary proceedings against judges initiated by the Armenian Ministry of Justice has increased significantly on their watch. Some of those judges have been removed from the bench.