Hrayr Tovmasyan Again Moved to Invite the President, Claims the Motion Was Due to an Error

Constitutional Court Judge Hrayr Tovmasyan has once again submitted a motion to invite the President of Armenia Armen Sarkissian as a witness regarding the dispute over the election results. Tovmasyan made this proposal during the court session on July 10, after the court had already rejected the motion once.

Tovmasyan initially stated that his previous motion to summon the president was refused due to a simple error; he referred to another article. “Therefore, I am now correcting this error and proposing to involve the President of Armenia as a witness to clarify the circumstances subject to clarification in this case, guided by Article 55,” said Tovmasyan.

He insisted that the three applicants in the case had raised a question that neither the respondent nor the related respondents could answer. He added that this fact is significant for the outcome of the case and is also crucial for the public. “My inner conviction is based on the fact that I have no doubts that the president was compelled, coerced, but the court must address this and evaluate the questions raised by the applicants,” Tovmasyan said.

The Constitutional Court had discussed this motion on July 9 after 18:00 in a consultation format. Arevik Petrosyan and Hrayr Tovmasyan did not participate in that discussion. They insisted that the motion should have been addressed in an immediate session, rather than in a procedural consultation format. However, the president of the Constitutional Court, Arman Dilanyan, quoted the law regarding the Constitutional Court: “During the examination of the case, the proposals of the Constitutional Court judges regarding the order of studying the materials are discussed immediately. It is clear that this concerns the order of studying the materials of the case; the proposal is discussed immediately. When a judge of the Constitutional Court submitted a motion and requested it to be discussed immediately, this was a proposal regarding the order of studying the materials of the case. The court discussed it immediately and decided to address the essence of the motion in a consultation format after the court session concluded.”

Arevik Petrosyan again insisted that the motion should be made the subject of discussion and voted on at that moment, otherwise she would consider it a violation. “The procedure for discussing the motion cannot be determined by the Constitutional Court when it is directly regulated by law and the procedural rules of the Constitutional Court,” she stated.

The Constitutional Court, by a majority of judges’ votes, decided to address Tovmasyan’s aforementioned motion and another motion in a consultation format after the break.