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Minister Pledges To Meet Pashinian’s Deadline For New Constitution.
Justice Minister Srbuhi Galian expressed confidence on Thursday that a government panel headed by her will execute Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s order to draft a new constitution for Armenia by the end of 2026.
Galian, who took up her current post one month ago, played down the fact that the Constitutional Reform Council has still not started working on the document.
“For some reason, the process has slowed down,” she told journalists. “I hope that in the near future we will manage to give new impetus to those reforms.”
“The objective is to have a new draft constitution within the defined time frame, and we will do that,” she said.
The council was formed by Pashinian in 2022 with the initial aim of proposing amendments to the current Armenian constitution. The premier changed the ad hoc body’s mandate in May this year, saying that it must draft a “new constitution” from scratch before January 2027. The move came as the Azerbaijani leaders continued to make the signing of a peace treaty with Armenia conditional on a change of its constitution which they say contains territorial claims to Azerbaijan.
Baku specifically wants Yerevan to remove a constitutional preamble that mentions Armenia’s 1990 declaration of independence, which in turn cites a 1989 unification act adopted by the legislative bodies of Soviet Armenia and the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast. The only legal way to do that is to enact an entirely new constitution through a referendum.
While denying opposition claims that he is bowing to the Azerbaijani pressure, Pashinian has sent mixed signals about his readiness to accept Baku’s demands. He rejected those demands on November 13 only to step up his criticism of the 1990 declaration the next day.
Galian would not say whether she thinks the new constitution should also mention the declaration. Nor did she give possible dates for the next session of the council.
The government panel was headed by former Justice Minister Grigor Minasian until his resignation more than two months ago. Galian automatically became its new chairwoman following her ministerial appointment.
Minasian said in August that the referendum on the new constitution will likely take place in 2027, after the next parliamentary elections due in June 2026. Daniel Ioannisian, a civic activist sitting on the council, suggested late last month that it may well be held later.
(azatutyun)