The 'Armenia' Faction to Establish a New Investigative Committee

The newspaper 'Jnews' reports that the opposition 'Armenia' faction intends to propose the establishment of a temporary investigative committee. This committee will investigate all instances of violations of ethical conduct by parliament members.

It has been revealed that the basis for the opposition's initiative includes, particularly, the incident involving National Assembly President Alen Simonyan, who verbally insulted a citizen and spat on him in downtown Yerevan, the unruly behavior of the Secretary of the ruling party's faction, Artur Hovhannisyan, during a discussion on the candidate for the Human Rights Defender, as well as the statement by the ruling party member Gurgen Arsenyan during parliamentary hearings on February 3 regarding the Lachin corridor, asserting that it is not worth risking the fate of 3 million Armenians for 120,000 Artsakh residents.

In light of these incidents, the opposition has proposed to establish a temporary committee to investigate these matters. According to the 'Rules of Procedure' law, a temporary committee is formed by a decision of the National Assembly, and the right to present a project to establish the committee belongs to the factions, with the initiator being the 'Armenia' faction. The number of members in the temporary committee is also determined by a decision of the National Assembly, while the composition of the committee is approved by the President of the National Assembly.

According to the same law, seats in the committee are distributed proportionally to the number of deputies in the factions, which implies that the ruling party will make up the majority in the newly formed committee. It remains unclear whether the ruling majority will actually provide members to the committee or if it will remain unformed altogether.

For more details, refer to the newspaper's current edition.