On 18 June the Armenian National Assembly elected Vahe Grigoryan, a prominent lawyer who is known to be a close ally to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and his My Step party, as a new member of Armenia’s Constitutional Court, reported the Armenian Radio Free Europe. Grigoryan’s appointment was backed by 99 lawmakers and opposed by 22.

“I don’t want to make a secret of the fact that I have friends in the My Step alliance. Our friendship has an ideological base and that ideological base is not a partisan base. It is about our common dream and goal: a free and democratic Armenia,” said Grigoryan after being elected as the new judge at the Constitutional Court. Speaking before the parliament’s vote, Grigoryan made it clear that he stands for a presidential, rather than a parliamentary, system of government. He called for a public debate on changing the Armenian constitution, which has been radically amended in a disputed 2015 referendum. He described the constitution as a “child born as a result of rape.” “We all love it and so on but we always remember his or her origin,” he said referring to the former regime.

Grigoryan had been known as a vocal critic of Armenia’s former governments. He represented opposition leader Levon Ter-Petrosian and his Armenian National Congress party in Constitutional Court hearings on their appeals against the official results of the 2008 presidential elections and the parliamentary elections held in 2012 and 2017. In addition, he has represented relatives of anti-government protesters killed by security forces in the wake of the 2008 vote in Armenian and European courts.

Two days after being elected as the new Constitutional Court Judge, Grigoryan declared that he can now also act as chairman of this institution. He said that only Arman Dilanyan, who was elected by the parliament last year, can say that he legitimately serves as a judge at the Constitutional Court and make decisions. He added that since Dilanyan is absent from Armenia at the moment he is single-handedly “taking over the powers and duties of the Constitutional Court chairman.”

The Constitutional Court comprises of nine judges. Hrayr Tovmasyan acted as the court chairman since March 2018. Grigoryan openly opposed Tovmasyan’s legitimacy, alongside the six other judges.