Armenian high court chief urges prime minister to 'end discourse' over pen gift  

People very often confuse the rules of good conduct with obsequiousness, ascribing gestures of politeness to bribery, Chair of the Constitutional Court Hrayr Tovmasyan said in a televised interview, commenting on the prime minister’s recent Facebook post with the pen gift received from him.

“There is a difference in terms of perceiving phenomena to distinguish between politeness and obsequiousness. If we take gratefulness for obsequiousness, why not say it right away” he told the Armnews TV channel on Tuesday.  

Tovmasyan noted Nikol Pashunyan’s public post sparked wide debates over the pen’s price (from €150 to €530), adding that he himself does not even remember how much it cost or whether or not he had bought it himself. Tovmasyan said he evenfeels  ashamed to address the topic at all.

“What surprises me is why he kept the pen for one and a half years. To be honest, I do not even remember giving gifting that pen to him. That’s just a gesture of politeness, a good manner to someone. I like giving presents, but I wouldn’t even consider it a present  at all. I said. ‘Keep it to yourself!’ because the prime minister of the country did not have a pen on himself at that moment,” Tovmasyan said, adding that the single item alone cannot ever dominate the country’s political agenda.  

“I offer my apologies and do not want to even speak about it. I urge all the people, [especially] statesmen to refrain from serious debates over the issue, as that  really devalues those institutions. Everything happened in front of video cameras, so if a colleague next to you is asking for a pen, and you are passing yours to him – to later give ground to speculations that it is obsequiosness– then you may well treat me as the last person demonstrating such a conduct.”

Tovmasyan instead called attention to the regional challenges and the problems still awaiting a solution, which he said should attract more serious debates by the public and political circles than the story with the single pen.