A change of Armenia’s existing constitution is Azerbaijan’s main precondition for signing an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty initialed in Washington in August. While publicly rejecting this precondition, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian has pledged to enact a new constitution. He said in September that it will be put on a referendum after Armenia’s next general elections due in June.
Galian, who heads the Constitutional Reform Council formed by Pashinian, said in November that the text will be ready “by March.” Artur Sakunts, a human rights activist sitting on the council, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service last week that the council will definitely fail to discuss and fully approve it by that time.
Galian indicated that the new constitution, which is being drafted by her ministry, will be made public before such approval.
“When I said that the text will be ready [in March] I never meant that the Council will have approved it,” the minister told a news conference.
“We will not deviate from the deadlines that we have repeatedly spoken about, and March remains the month for concluding our work,” she said. “That is, in March we will already have a text that will be published.”
According to Sakunts, the council dominated by state officials has yet to discuss key chapters of the would-be constitution relating to the executive and judicial branches of government. Nor has it addressed so far the thorny issue of Armenia’s 1990 declaration of independence mentioned in a preamble to the current constitution.
The declaration in turn cites a 1989 unification act adopted by the legislative bodies of Soviet Armenia and the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast. Baku says that this reference constitutes a territorial claim to Azerbaijan.
Pashinian said last year that the declaration must not be referenced in the new constitution. He has since continued to deny bowing to Azerbaijani pressure.
Armenian opposition groups have dismissed these assurances and pledged to scuttle the change of the constitution sought by Pashinian. They say that his continuing unilateral concessions only encourage Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev to make more demands on Armenia and will not bring real peace.