168.am reports on the judges of Armenia Constitutional Court who supported or were against decision on elections

News.am, Armenia

Out of all the judges of the Constitutional Court of Armenia, only 3 were in favor of annulling the results of the elections [snap parliamentary elections], including Hrayr Tovmasyan, Arevik Petrosyan and Ashot Khachatryan [Ashot Khachatryan is the member of the Constitutional Court whom Speaker of the National Assembly Ararat Mirzoyan was trying to bribe and tempt to hold the temporary position of chairman of the Constitutional Court after forcing Hrayr Tovmasyan and illegally dismissing him from the position of chairman of the Constitutional Court]. In essence, in this case, the dire challenges facing Armenia and his responsibility to take part in solving the challenges were overriding in his conscience. This is what 168.am newspaper writes, adding the following:

“We were told that Judges Yervand Khundkaryan and Artur Vagharshyan would also vote against the decision of the Central Electoral Commission to leave the results of the elections unchanged, if it weren’t for the compromising information that the judges “earned” in the positions of Chairman of the Civil and Administrative Chamber of the Court of Cassation and Head of the Chair of Theory and History of State and Law of the Faculty of Law at Yerevan State University, respectively.

In reality, the authorities brought these two judges to the Constitutional Court for this very purpose since, in any case, they are controllable and won’t take drastic steps.

Everything is clear in Judge Edgar Shatiryan’s case — he has friendly ties with the elite, and it would be at least naïve to expect him to have a sense of responsibility. Besides, he has never stood out with courage at crucial moments. Judge Arayik Tunyan’s motives aren’t too clear.

So, yesterday’s decision had been made when the authorities destroyed the Constitutional Court and appointed controllable people to replace the dismissed judges.”

Yesterday the Constitutional Court left the decision of the Central Electoral Commission on the results of the snap parliamentary elections in effect, that is, it rejected the claims of four political parties to annul the results of the elections.