An Expertise Discussion on “The Government Order of the Republic of Armenia: The Necessity for Constitutional Changes”.

The Protection of Rights without Borders NGO organized an expertise discussion on the topic “The Government Order of the Republic of Armenia: The Necessity of for the Constitutional Changes” on October 13 of 2021. 

The speakers of the discussion were Hayk Martirosyan legal expert of the Transparency International Anticorruption Center and Anahit Manasyan, PhD, Associate Professor of Yerevan State University, Chair of Constitutional Law. 

Araks Melkonyan, the President of the “Protection of Rights without Borders” NGO delivered a speech and conducted the meeting. 

While referring the necessity of constitutional reforms, Hayk Martirosyan evaluated the Constitutional reforms of 2015 negatively, which led to a number of uncertainties on their turn  

At the same time, the latter highlighted the evaluation and analysis of the operation of all public administration bodies since the Independence of Armenia, which will enable to evaluate the efficiency of the activities of the given public administration body. 

As stated by her, before the discussion of different government models, an emphasis on the development levels of the politics systems should be made. The parliamentarian control over security service and foreign policy is very weak. 

The diplomatic service predicting the foreign policy and security sector bodies with their exceptions are in the field of unaccountability. 

Referring the impact of the presidential institute on the political life and on the management of public life, H. Martirosyan mentioned, that the events of the last years showed, that this format of presidential institute and its liability circle do not contribute the efficiency raising of the public administration.  

H. Martirosyan also made a reference to the necessity to raise the efficiency of the judiciary taking into consideration the protection of human rights.  

Anahit Manasyan spoke about the positive and negative aspects of the government systems of other countries. 

As stated by her, in many parliamentarian countries a tendency of convergence between executive and legislative branches of the government is detected, which is a dangerous for any kind of administration type. 

Relevant measures should be taken to exclude that convergence.

A. Manasyan highlighted the insurance of the judiciary in terms of separation and balancing of the authorities, without which, regardless the government model, executive and legislative system cannot properly function.  

 As assessed by her, in any case if we adopt regulations, but do not have the relevant culture and approach to accept those regulations, in that case we can face problematic situations. 

Summarizing the discussion, A. Melkonyan stated, that before the implementation of each reform, a serious examination on the implementation of the functions of public administration bodies for the past years should be conducted to detect whether the latter are in a line with the Constitution. 

The discussion was organized by the Protection of Rights without Borders NGO in the scope of the “Support to the Public Awareness on the Constitutional Reforms” with the financial support of the Eurasia Partnership Foundation.