On 24 June, the head of the opposition Bright Armenia (LHK) faction Edmon Marukyan stated that his party would not interfere as long as the process of the amendments over the Armenian constitution before the process regarding the country’s former President Robert Kocahryan would be resolved, reported aysor.am. 

“We have left it in legal limits. With written procedure the examined case must have [a] speedy solution,” Marukyan said, adding that the Constitution gives three-month time for disputes, while there is no set time regarding laws and the parliamentarians are free to apply any time. “We have already started working on the application and will work till strengthening it. After the Constitutional Court (CC) ends examination of Kocharyan’s case we will submit our application… recognizing all the constitutional amendments [as] anti-constitutional,” he said, adding that it is [only a] matter of days. “Bright Armenia will keep the process [with]in [an] exclusively legal domain and will not allow any of the conflicting parties to serve this process in its own favour,” he added.

The other parliamentary opposition force in the country, the Prosperous Armenia (BHK), said that they treat their LHK colleagues decision with respect. LHK deputy Iveta Tonoyan stressed that a day ago the BHK had substantial discussion with the LHK representatives regarding the issue. “The LHK has its reservations regarding the terms, so now we are waiting for their proposals on coming up with a joint initiative,” she said. 

Other political actors criticized the shown reluctance of the LHK. The President of the Hayrenik (Motherland) party Artur Vanetsyan said that the LHK’s recent steps have shown that they are not an opposition faction but an attaché to the person [Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan] who has overthrown the constitutional order and usurped the power. “After such developments, the Bright Armenia faction stopped being an opposition force to me. My assessment is that there is only one opposition force and it is the BHK faction,” he said.

The Armenian lawmaker Tigran Urikhanyan considers that on a parliamentary level the opposition field is being eliminated. He stressed that if the hopes of the opposition sector of the population are broken and their political interests are not being served the mentioned forces are not only being deprived of the comparably small number of votes but of necessary amount of votes for becoming a majority in future.

On 22 June, the Armenian National Assembly adopted the draft amendments to the Constitution under which the position of the CC president and the powers of the CC judges who have been in office for more than 12 years would be terminated (Caucasus Watch reported). The opposition Prosperous Armenia party announced that it would be collecting signatures from other parliamentarians for an appeal to the CC in regard to the law (Caucasus Watch reported).