The Declaration of Independence was the promise; the Constitution was the fulfillment.
Warren Burger, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court
Recently, the Constitutional Court of Armenia, a body 8 out of 9 members of which were put forward by the incumbent Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and his associates, published a decision regarding the constitutionality of the regulations adopted by the Armenia-Azerbaijan Delimitation Commission. As one might expect, the holders of higher education in law who occupy the chairs of the members of the Constitutional Court (it is not everyone who holds a judge’s chair who merits to be called such) arrived at the conclusion that the regulations are in compliance with the Constitution of the Republic of Armenia, hence there is no need to amend the latter. Indeed, why change the Constitution and trouble yourself with a referendum when you can simply interpret it in a way that is favourable to Pashinyan and his imaginary ‘peace agenda’? It is not important what is written, what matters is how it will be read. And look, the bulk of the 33-page decision is devoted not to delimitation, but to the reinterpretation of the Declaration of Independence embodied in the Preamble to the Constitution. With this ruling, the Constitutional Court brought the finishing touch to Pashinyan and his co-partisans’ protracted and fierce campaign against the Independence Declaration by stating that it should be applied in a “narrow” sense – only on matters addressed in the Constitution. In other words, the provisions of the Declaration of Independence, especially those that affect ‘the fundamental principles and goals of Armenian statehood’, including the reunification of Armenia and Artsakh, as well as international recognition of the Armenian Genocide, have no legal force and significance as they are not stated in the Constitution. Trampling on the Declaration of Independence like ‘a parent devouring its child’ at Pashinyan’s behest, the ‘higher’ lawyers are foaming at the mouth with their tirade to convince Aliyev that nothing shall prevent him from fulfilling his expansionist intentions, not least the helpless and battered Constitution.
Significantly, the ground for this development had been prepared for a long time. Pashinyan and his system operated in two directions: firstly, they formed a docile Constitutional Court, and secondly, they belittled and questioned the role and importance of the Declaration of Independence for the Armenian people through their constant attacks on it. It is not even worth paying attention to the first one, as the steps taken by the authorities in this direction were akin to the combination of a novice chess player, where the intentions of the player are clear from the very first move.
As for the second, it is essential to remember that over the past two years Nikol Pashinyan has not missed a single pretext to denounce the Declaration of Independence and its fundamental principles, often synchronised to the timing of Ilham Aliyev – his educated elevator partner. Remarkably, in this February, the leaders of the two neighbouring countries delivered as if agreed messages: Nikol Pashinyan targeted the Declaration of Independence of the Republic of Armenia (RA), virtually stating that its underlying guidelines hindered the ‘peace agenda’, while Ilham Aliyev attacked the RA Constitution, declaring that a peace treaty could only be concluded after the former had been amended. It is not without reason that even before Aliyev’s statement, and especially after it, representatives of the authorities have undertaken zealous advocacy work to pave the way for changing the Constitution and, accordingly, the Declaration of Independence proper.
Interestingly, Aliyev’s statement ‘opened’ Pashinyan’s eyes. If in his address on the 32nd anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, Pashinyan still referred to it as ‘a biblical message’ and associated independence with the biblical Parable of the Ten Minas, implying that everyone who has (independence) more will be given it, but as for the one who has nothing, even what they have will be taken away, then, in the speeches of the next two years, he already diligently admitted his guilt in attaching the highest value to the Declaration of Independence and naively failing to realise that this very document was hindering his ‘peace agenda’, as the provisions of the Declaration are ‘inviting’ for aggression against Armenia. In addition, in Pashinyan’s eyes, the Armenian citizens’ perceptions and visions of independence and statehood have transformed and are now different from those they held at the time of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence.
For any people forming a statehood, the Declaration of Independence is its ‘birth certificate.’ It identifies the values and principles that set the people on the path to independence and continue to accompany them during the existence of nationhood, since the purpose towards which a people builds a state cannot be subject to concessions or changes. It is absolutely unprecedented for any country, when laying down its national interests and principles as the basis of its statehood, to think about the feelings and concerns of the peoples of neighbouring countries or to raise the issue of revising these principles and values whenever global and regional realities change. It is no less unacceptable for any power to question the relevance of these perpetual values for the sake of self-preservation and servicing its misleading agenda.
The U.S. Declaration of Independence has not been amended since its adoption in 1776, but this has never prevented the United States from pursuing a foreign policy aimed at securing its own national interests irrespective of historical epochs and geopolitical arrangements, and from employing all components of national power to do so.
It is noteworthy that the decision of the Constitutional Court is being published against the backdrop of Azerbaijan’s relentless demands to amend the RA Constitution. If formerly the Armenian authorities tried to solve the jigsaw puzzle set by Aliyev by pushing the argument about the unbreakable link between the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, thus trying to prepare the ground for ‘editing’ the Declaration of Independence, now they have shown some inventive spirit and, having ‘washed their hands’ have eliminated another obstacle on the way to the ‘peace agenda’ – the Declaration of Independence, which constitutes the principles of Armenian statehood – by the means of the Constitutional Court. Well, Mr Aliyev, the road is now cleared, ‘welcome to here’.
Armenian constitutional scholars, as if anticipating the threat of Nikol Pashinyan’s forthcoming manipulations, when commenting on the relationship between the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, legally reasoned that these two documents are self-contained and the Declaration of Independence is not subject to change. The Declaration of Independence antedated the Constitution and takes precedence over it. This document lays down the fundamental provisions for the establishment and preservation of the Armenian state. The Armenian people’s right to statehood was embodied in the Declaration of Independence and cemented in the Constitution. The autonomy and unalterability of the Declaration of Independence suggest confidently that the substantiality of the people’s right to statehood does not depend on the fate of the Constitution. Constitutions, encompassing their preambles, may be amended, may be redrafted, but the Declaration of Independence is immutable and permanent. Armenian Declaration of Independence is an act of fundamental importance, therefore it should be regarded as an immutable safeguard for the survival of statehood. The Declaration of Independence can lose its force only de facto if the very state ceases to exist, as a result of collapse or takeover by both inner and external enemies.
This is the truth, and whatever else Nikol Pashinyan states and attempts to cement through the obedient Constitutional Court is yet another manipulation exclusively aimed at promoting the Azerbaijani agenda. There is only one thing we can agree with Pashinyan on: independence is like health, you need to take care of it every day, even if you have it. And taking care of one’s health first of all means eliminating all those parasites and infections that impair the body from within, injecting deadly poison in small doses day after day. Verily, if we have independence, we will have it. And for it to be, we need a state and a nationally-oriented government recognising the value of statehood and independence – something that Nikol Pashinyan and his ruling group have no bearing on, and the peace agenda they have proclaimed is an agenda of anti-independence and anti-statehood. The ruling of the Constitutional Court foretelling the death of the state is a wake-up call for all those Armenians who hold independence and the Armenian stateness as their highest value.
