A national referendum is the only legal way of completely replacing the current Armenian constitution enacted in 1995 and repeatedly amended since then.
“If I’m not mistaken, one of the opposition representatives said during an RFE/RL program that ‘we should turn the constitutional referendum into [a popular vote of no confidence in Pashinian,]” parliament speaker Alen Simonian told journalists. “What constitutional referendum? Have we said that a constitutional referendum will be held in the near future?”
“Such a change might happen in, say, 2030,” added Simonian.
Pashinian said last month that Armenia needs to adopt a new constitution reflecting the “new geopolitical environment” in the region. Also in January, the Armenian Ministry of Justice a presented a still unpublicized “concept” for constitutional reform to the prime minister’s office.
Critics believe that Pashinian first and foremost wants to get rid of a preamble to the current constitution which makes an indirect reference to a 1989 declaration on Armenia’s unification with Nagorno-Karabakh and calls for international recognition of the 1915 Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said on February 1 that Armenia should remove that reference and amend other documents “infringing on Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity” if it wants to make peace with his country.
Armenian opposition leaders portrayed Aliyev’s statement as further proof that Pashinian wants to change the constitution under pressure from Azerbaijan as well as Turkey. The premier and his allies denied that.
Simonian insisted that “there is no decision” on the new constitution yet. He claimed that the authorities simply wanted to trigger a public debate on the idea and gauge Armenians’ reaction to it.
Ishkhan Saghatelian, a leader of the main opposition Hayastan alliance, similarly told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service last week: “In my view, they [the authorities] are trying to examine the public mood and they will make a final decision only if they feel that they will succeed.”
Saghatelian said that should they decide to hold the referendum after all the Armenian opposition “will do everything to turn it into a referendum of no confidence in Nikol Pashinian.”