Should convicts vote? - Armenian law firm hosts debate on constitutional reforms

By involving law students in a discussion on constitutional reforms, the law firm AM has tried to figure out what Armenia's basic law lacks in order to make life more prosperous, to ensure bettter guarantees for the protection of laws and to make the governance and political processes more effective.

Summing up the outcomes of the debate entitled, “How to Reform the Constitution?”, the firm's Managing Partner Grigor Minasyan addressed the questions raised and the proposal voiced. 
 

“Numerous proposals have been submitted on the preliminary constitutional control of laws; on expanding the scope of the people eligible to apply to the Constitutional Court. It was proposed to constitutionalize the institute of the local referendum and the status of intercommunity unions. A special attention was paid to the issue of defining the guarantees of independence of the communities from marzpertarans”, he said.

Furthermore, Minasyan said that the meeting also addressed issues of abolishing or narrowing the scope of restrictions of convicts' electoral rights and the compliance of the norms with international legal documents.

He added, “There were suggestions on restoring the electoral rights of RA citizens who reside abroad.”

According to him the students proposed their models of Parliamentary system of state government: “There were suggestions on restrictions of powers of the President, on raising the age limit for the Presidential candidates, on establishing in the Constitution the pre-election deposit. Possible models of introducing the institute of juries in the Republic of Armenia were also proposed. It was also proposed to establish in the Constitution the labor right, the demand for mandatory compensation for the damage caused to the environment.”

Addressing the proposed reforms, Minister of Justice Hovhannes Manukyan described them as a good opportunity to foster the society's development. “Today we have an opportunity to foster the society's development thanks to the constitutional reforms, without waiting for the need to change the basic law to arise as an outcome of the development of social processes,” Minasyan said.

Hovhannes Manukyan does not agree with the approach that there are very serious issues and they should be emphasized. He mentioned that: “Perhaps with some of them it is possible to agree, nevertheless it does not mean that although being concerned with the solution of those issues we should not think about such important issues, as the improvement of our country's primary law.”