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Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Tuesday that adopting a new constitution would be the most important reform on the path to democratic development.
“The reform of reforms that we must implement is the adoption of a new constitution, which, by the way, must also create an organic connection between the people and the rule of law,” he said during a panel discussion at the Armenian Forum for Democracy.
He noted that since 1995, in no constitutional referendum has more than fifty percent of the population voted in favor of the constitution.
“This is a political issue, but there is also an organic issue: the people do not consider the rule of law established in Armenia to be their own. The people do not feel that they have agreed to live by these rules in their everyday lives,” Pashinyan said.
He added that the current legal order is as disliked by the people as those imposed by the Soviet authorities, the Russian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, or the Persian Empire.
“Because just like before, people still feel that some group has imposed this order upon them—whether that group is part of the Armenian elite or from another country. What is a constitution? It’s when people go to the polls and, with their vote, formalize an agreement on how we are going to live together in the same country. And I believe that without this reform, we will not be able to resolve these issues—especially at the institutional level,” Pashinyan said.