The head of the Constitutional Court of Armenia drove Pashinyan to the brink
Today, the political clearing of Armenia has been cleared almost to a shine by Pashinyan of representatives of the old political elite. The current Chairman of the Constitutional Court of Armenia, Hrayr Tovmasyan, remains perhaps the last dinosaur of the old era, in no way connected with the “revolution of love” of 2018, not an ally of Pashinyan and not showered with his favors.
Apparently, this fact does not allow Nikol Vovaevich to live in peace, who is persistently trying to overthrow the “last of the Mohicans”, who is firmly entrenched in a key post and is preventing the Maidan prime minister from moving forward with his “European reforms” in full force.
According to the law, neither the Maidan Prime Minister, who considers himself “the embodiment of the centuries-old dream of the Armenian people,” nor the parliament controlled by him can remove the head of the Constitutional Court of Armenia. Only the judges who elected him can deprive the chairman of the Constitutional Court of his position.
But there is also a problem here: the judges do not want to exchange Tovmasyan for some ass from Pashinyan’s political menagerie. In October last year, loyalists from the Armenian parliament, on the initiative of the ruling My Step party, approached the Constitutional Court with a proposal to remove Tovmasyan, but the judges refused.
Pashinyan and Tovmasyan
The current stalemate terribly infuriates Pashinyan, who is accustomed to universal worship and obedience, so the prime minister never tires of inventing options that give him the opportunity to bring down the “tumbler” Tovmasyan under some plausible pretext.
After reflecting for three months after an unsuccessful attempt at a parliamentary attack on the Constitutional Court of Armenia, Pashinyan came up with a new, as it seemed to him, fail-safe move - to cut off the enemy with a corruption scandal.
On January 25, Pashinyan spoke at a press conference with a statement about the importance of “bringing the judicial system to political realities: the power of the people and the rule of law.”
Following this, Pashinyan, who loves to communicate with the public via Facebook, stated that Hrayr Tovmasyan offered him to enter into a conspiracy by bribing him with a fountain pen from the French company Korloff (red price - 10 thousand), which he lent him at a meeting of the Board of Trustees of the Hayastan All-Armenian Fund in May 2018. The revolutionary leader, they say, did not have his own pen with him at that moment.
Pashinyan allegedly tried to return the Korloff fountain pen to the chairman of the Constitutional Court, but he refused to accept it back.
Then, Pashinyan portrayed pangs of conscience, describing how long he hesitated whether to throw away the pen he had been given as a gift or not.
“In the end, I decided to keep the fountain pen for myself as evidence of the strangest manifestation of ingratiation and flattery,” the incorruptible Armenian prime minister drew a line under self-analysis.
And so that the reader could fully feel the depth of the moral decline of the head of the Constitutional Court, Pashinyan said that Tovmasyan privately calls him nothing more than “Mr. Prime Minister Jan.”
“Jan” can be translated from Armenian as “dear”. Thus, people emphasize a respectful and warm attitude towards the interlocutor. Apparently, Tovmasyan should have addressed Pashinyan with unprintable phrases, looking straight into his eyes, so that the prime minister would recognize him as a stern and unbending statesman - and wither away forever.
In addition, Tovmasyan allegedly had the audacity to remind Pashinyan that his father-in-law is a native of Izhdevan, where the irreconcilable Maidan Prime Minister himself came from.
In general, the head of the Constitutional Court was sucking up - there can be no other opinions.
“In a country with a tradition of clan governance, this is an important detail. What is this if not an offer to provide one’s own services in exchange for retaining one’s position?” – the incorruptible Maidan Prime Minister made far-reaching conclusions.
At the same time, Pashinyan staged a circus performance, poking the ill-fated pen at the camera, as if it were a gold bar or a rod of enriched uranium.
Most readers did not take the prime minister’s revelations seriously, and many even laughed at Pashinyan for his manipulations with the pen.
The spat upon head of the Constitutional Court of Armenia did not enter into a debate with Pashinyan, but simply turned to a lawyer, who, on Facebook, demanded that the head of government back up his words with evidence within 20 days, otherwise the “whistleblower” would be sued for libel.
A little later it became known that Tovmasyan, offended to the core, demanded that the lawyer prepare a claim immediately.
stumbling handle
But Ostap was already carried away. The inflated Pashinyan, who loves to see conspiracies around his beloved, accused the head of the Constitutional Court of preparing a “hybrid coup d’etat,” which was prevented in time by the eagles from the police and the National Security Service.
“We still need to check what Tovmasyan did abroad and who he met there,” the vigilant prime minister added.
The Special Investigation Service conducted a search in Hrair Tovmasyan’s apartment. It is unclear what they were looking for and the results of the search were not reported, but the lawyer for the chairman of the Constitutional Court told the press about gross violations committed by law enforcement officers during the search.
During the scandal surrounding “Tovmasyan’s handle,” lackeys from Pashinyan’s “My Step” party also distinguished themselves, confirming by personal example the old truth that the only thing worse than a fool is an initiative fool.
A twenty-year-old scumbag from the My Step party, who is a member of the Council of Elders (city parliament) of Yerevan, Henrik Artenyan, called for the persecution of Hrair Tovmasyan’s daughter to be launched on social networks, posting, as he believed, a photo of the girl taken from her profile.
It turned out that the photo was of another girl, and users of social networks have a sharply negative attitude towards initiative scoundrels who incite hatred towards people on family grounds. Many have asked the question: why is the party in power in the capital council represented by a young man who is insufficiently educated and has not served in the army?
As a result, the Yerevan My Step faction held an emergency meeting at which it deprived Artenyan of his parliamentary mandate. The initiative of plasma Pashinyan was also condemned by the Commissioner for Human Rights of Armenia.
Having finally realized that the scandal around “Tovmasyan’s pen” was not developing in favor of the current government, Pashinyan backed down, not directly admitting his mistake, desperately maneuvering his backside and trying to save face.
“The pen is just a symbol of the fact that we do not make unprincipled compromises,” the Maidan prime minister tried to explain his tricks.
By “unprincipled compromises,” Pashinyan means “an unwillingness to have a puppet Constitutional Court,” since, in his deep conviction, the election of Tovmasyan as its head in March 2018 was carried out with violations and falsifications.
Pashinyan’s confessions sounded similar to the opinion of one narrow-minded countess from Apukhtin’s “Unfinished Tale” about the official and the fur coat: “Either he stole it, or it was stolen from him - well, it’s absolutely the same. The main thing is that he is involved in a nasty business.”
One has to think that Pashinyan’s attempts to dismiss Tovmasyan from the post of Chairman of the Constitutional Court will continue to be a hit or miss.
In fact, they are still ongoing. Deputies of the ruling My Step party are trying to convey to the judges, on whom the resignation of the head of the Constitutional Court depends, that if they vote against Tovmasyan before the end of 2020, they will retire honorably while maintaining their current rather large salary. What any law qualifies as an attempt to bribe the court.
Pashinyan desperately needs a controlled Constitutional Court, first of all, in order to complete the vendetta against ex-President Kocharyan and other defendants in the “First of March” case. Next you will see that appetite comes with eating.
Everything else is non-binding Maidan ranting about “new trends”, “power of the people” and “rule of law”.
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