Verelq: Will Pashinyan forget his past? the deputy’s proposal raised a wave of dissatisfaction

Armen Khachatryan, a deputy of the ruling “My Step” faction of the National Assembly, has put into circulation a project on making an addition to the RA Criminal Code, which plans to criminalize actions aimed at publicly insulting a representative of the government or obstructing the performance of his official duties, and punish for it with a fine or even imprisonment.

According to the draft, it is proposed that publicly insulting a representative of the government in connection with the performance of his official duties shall be punished with a fine in the amount of one hundred to three hundred times the minimum salary or imprisonment for a maximum period of one month.

In addition to this, taking actions to hinder the performance of official duties of a representative of the government, if there are no features of the crime provided for in Article 316 of the Criminal Code (exerting violence against a representative of the government), will be punished with a fine in the amount of two hundred to five hundred times the minimum salary or imprisonment for a maximum period of two months.

Passions have been boiling over this project since yesterday, social media users are calling on the MP as well as Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan not to go down this path, which leads to the final dictatorship. After all, Pashinyan himself has been criticizing government officials for years, being both a journalist and a member of the National Assembly.

Political scientist Stepan Danielyan thinks that how? Serzh Sargsyan prepared a constitution for Nikol Pashinyan, so the latter’s deputies are preparing a gift for the next government.

“Actually, everything that Nikol Pashinyan has been doing all his life, what environmentalists, activists of Mashtots Park, Electric Yerevan, 100 dram movements, some of which are still in the parliament and the government, are being criminalized.

In the next phase, the law on rallies will be tightened and restrictions on the right to freedom of speech will be introduced.

All this was predicted, but the people of Imkayl do not believe that these laws will work against them in the not-too-distant future, because they will find themselves on the other side of the barricades again.

Unlike in the past, all this is done on behalf of the people, so in the future no one will be able to protest against these laws,” says Danieline.

He also drew a parallel between this project and the introduced thesis that since there is a danger of counter-revolution, it is necessary to put aside playing democracy and strengthen the government.