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Armenia’s 15-year-old Mother law has comments already: over 60 specialists, lawyers, constitutionalists, have prepared comments for 1086-page Armenian Constitution within a year period.

Expert, constitutionalist working for the German Organisation for Technical Cooperation (GTZ), Vardan Poghosyan, who has also worked on the comments, says that it was strange for a 15-year-old Constitution not to have comments.

“The comments, first of all, aim at supporting lawyers to understand well, comprehend and duly apply the Constitution. The comments are also scientific. This is very important for the development of the Armenian constitutional law as science,” Vardan Poghosyan said.

The lack of constitutional comments by now is conditioned by the circumstance that constitutional law did not have wide and strong scientific basis in the Soviet period, according to the expert.

The constitutionalist hopes that the comments will really contribute to the further development of the constitutional law as science.

“At the same time I should mention that the comments do not answer all the principle issues as science needs time for development. This is the first attempt, which, naturally, will not come without shortcomings, though, future specialists will find many basic provisions here, which, I hope, they will develop later,” he said.

The constitutionalist sees a “huge gap” between the Armenian Constitution and the constitutional reality and highlights one of its reasons.

“First of all, it is the lack of political will among the authorities. Why is it so: only because the President and the National Assembly do not want to apply it? No, not only. We have been taking the Constitution as a political document, political declaration, which is obligatory for everyone from the highest official to a civilian, and the Constitution is called to protect the rights of all of them.”

Though 15 years have passed since the adoption of the Constitution, Armenians keep treating it as a proclamation. The attitude should change and for making a change, according to him, political will is needed.

“Currently this precondition, unfortunately, is very unsatisfactory,” Vardan Poghosyan said, adding that for correct application of the Constitution, first, one should understand the Mother law, and the new work of the constitutional comments “Comments on the RA Constitution” will help the process.

They are not meant for a wide audience of readers, though, they could come useful to anyone having active civil role. They are, first of all, meant for specialists, judicial system representatives, officials, deputies, civil workers.

The RA Constitution mostly meets the contemporary European Constitution standards, V. Poghosyan said.

According to him, constitutional reforms of 2005 made significant amendments to the Armenian Constitution.

“The solutions, which today the Constitution text includes, are enough to ensure protection of the human rights on the one hand and rule out the threat for super-centralization of power, on the other. In a word, the text which exists could serve as good basis to ensure regular development,” Poghosyan said.

Armenia’s Ombudsman Armen Harutyunyan also affirms that our Constitution is democratic, adding that “Our Constitution is good enough to ensure democratic development.”

Following the constitutional comments, the constitutionalist has hopes: “Only in this case the Constitution can be called to life, bring blood and flesh into the legislation and be applied in certain legal relations.”

Note that the OSCE Yerevan office and GTZ have supported the publication of the work.