Reflecting on the draft of the new constitution of ‘regional significance’, which Turkish commandant Nikol Pashinyan is promoting in order to ‘build’ the Armenian ‘people and state’, Minister of Justice Srbuhi Galyan told that the country’s basic law should not ‘jeopardise peace, the peace agreement and the peace-oriented relations’. Of course, this is what the nation needs after the catastrophic defeats of 2020 and 2023, as well as the ongoing military occupation of parts of Gegharkunik, Vayots Dzor and Syunik. Galyan, who was relatively recently appointed to the post instead of Grigor, Mikael Minasyan’s brother, said an obvious nonsense in the style of her boss – the chief Turk.
Minister Galyan, in fact, argues that the ‘peace’ agreement with Azerbaijan, which is an international agreement by nature, has supreme legal force in relation to the national constitution and should set the general vector of Armenia’s constitutional development. This is most likely a declarative reference provision of the current Constitution of Armenia on the Declaration of Independence. Presenting himself as the main democrat at international forums almost all over the world, Nikol Pasha let his thoughts flow over the tree, arguing that the ‘peace’ agreement established the norm that it was impossible to invoke acts of national law to refuse to fulfil obligations under the agreement. Apparently, for Azerbaijan, these were empty talks, so the eastern Turks demanded that the term ‘Declaration of Independence’ be permanently removed from the Constitution. Let us remind that in the latter, the unification of Armenia and Artsakh is proclaimed as one of the goals of the Armenian statehood. The Turkish commandant has already taken almost all the necessary steps to fulfil the will of the Baku padishah and put an end to the Armenian issue, so the case for small.
The primacy of an international agreement over the constitution is a legal invention of the Turkish administration. Recently, the world has been thinking differently: the constitution is an act of supreme legal force, and any legal act in force on the territory of the state cannot contradict it. For example, at the beginning of the 21st century, the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany (FCC of Germany) ruled in the Gergühl case that the Basic Law of Germany is an act of supreme legal force and the legislator has the right not to comply with international legal obligations, if it is the only way to avoid violating the basic constitutional principles. Consequently, there is a certain set of constitutionally significant values, deviation from which is unacceptable under the threat of the actual abolition of state sovereignty. At the same time, the FCC of Germany stressed that the state was obliged to comply with the norms of international law (agreements and customs).
The current Armenian legislation proceeds from similar premises, because any international agreement must be checked for compliance with the Constitution before it enters into force (Article 74 of the Law on the Constitutional Court of Armenia). Therefore, in 2024, a constitutional and legal review of the provision on the delimitation and demarcation of the state border with Azerbaijan took place, which the chief Turk presented as a kind of protection against ‘escalation’ to the people. Obiter dictum the Constitutional Court of Armenia decided that the Declaration of Independence had no constitutional force and was not part of the Constitution of Armenia, therefore, the reference to the joint resolution of the Supreme Soviets of the Armenian SSR and Nagorno-Karabakh in 1989 had no legal significance.
However, even these treacherous gestures did not seem to convince the Azerbaijani aggressor in any way, so the chief Turk wants to adopt a new constitution. Its preparation in words has been going on since 2018 and, at some point, acquired the character of a never-ending repair: it’s a pity to abandon, but there is no strength or motivation to finish either. The motivation to reform the obviously broken system and share the powers (for which his team did not have the appropriate competencies) with President Armen Sarkissian did not appear after 2020. Endless meetings of the constitutional reform council were held, while the people received only fragmentary information about the proposed text of the draft constitution. The only thing obvious was the desire to preserve Serzh’s mechanism of the state with the odious principle of a ‘stable’ majority in the parliament and almost dictatorial powers of the prime minister. After all, the shirt made for former President Sargsyan, turned out to fit Nikola Pasha – the self-proclaimed beacon of democracy in the South Caucasus. Now the only reason for changing the constitution is to formalise the military-political capitulation and the termination of Armenia’s sovereignty.
Is there anything surprising about this? Not at all: ‘Real Armenia’, the vicious child of the political philistinism of Levon Ter-Petrosyan, Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan, implies in its essence the rejection of the fundamental values of the Armenian state. Nikol Pasha absorbed the worst of all the post-Soviet leaders that Armenia had, including their foreign policy courses, and made the final decision to put the remnants of the state up for auction of the ‘crossroads of peace’: take as much of the Armenian sovereignty as you want! However, the chief Turk still has to convince citizens by hook or by crook to vote for the new Pashist constitution. That’s what he and his minions will be doing for the next two years.
To sweeten the pill, they will most likely add innovations to the draft of the new Constitution that are very ‘useful for the economy’, which in reality will only formalise the colonisation of Armenia (for example, the possibility of buying land by foreign citizens). In any case, do not be deceived by them and do not say ‘yes’ to this charade. The new Constitution will be written by a new Armenian aristocracy, which will build a new Armenian state. The author of ‘Real Armenia’ was not given a ‘mandate’ for this by anyone in the Armenian world – as he likes to put it. It depends on whether the Armenian world will remind him of this, whether this test of the immune response will be the last, or whether we still deserve another chance to build an Armenian state.
