News - HayaKve draft law rejected by Armenia legislature committee

After a two-hour discussion at Monday’s meeting of the Standing Committee on State and Legal Affairs of the National Assembly (NA) of Armenia, Aram Petrosyan, the authorized representative of the HayaKve civil initiative, suggested postponing the vote on this initiative’s draft law "On Amendments to the Criminal Code of the Republic of Armenia," which shall decide whether to include it in the NA agenda or not. The chairman of the committee, Vladimir Vardanyan, announced that there is no such procedure when the discussed draft is put off for two months at the end and must be put to a vote. But Artsvik Minasyan, the secretary of the opposition Armenia Faction, brought the relevant provision of the NA Rules of Procedure Law, in which it was stipulated that if there are proposals regarding the discussed draft, then its author can withdraw the draft for two months. Also, the Armenia Faction MPs announced that if the draft is put to the vote, it is the result of an arbitrary interpretation of the law by the ruling majority Civil Contract Faction. The law initiative of HayaKve was not put on the agenda of the NA session, with the votes of 7 majority faction MPs against. The members of the Armenia Faction demanded that, according to the regulations, present a special opinion at the NA session. So, the matter of putting this law draft on the agenda will be voted on at the beginning of Tuesday’s regular four-day sittings of the National Assembly.