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Armenia’s Central Electoral Commission (CEC) will convene a session on Tuesday afternoon to sign a protocol on transferring the parliamentary mandate of Felix Tsolakyan to the next candidate, spokesperson Hermine Harutyunyan told Panorama.am.

She says the commission has already received a protocol by Speaker of the National Assembly Ara Babloyan on ordering terminated Tsolakyan’s MP mandate.

“After drawing up a protocol at today’s session, the party will be notified of which candidate can approach and pick up the mandate,” she said, adding the law does not envisage any timeframes for taking a parliamentary seat.     

The move comes after Tsolakyan, a former member of the Republican Party of Armenia faction, was appointed Armenia’s Minister of Emergency Situations on 4 October. In June 2018, he withdrew from the faction after backing Nikol Pashinyan’s bid to become prime minister during the May 1 vote in the parliament.

He is expected to be replaced by Martun Grigoryan, the next candidate who gained the most votes (some 11,000) on the Republican Party’s electoral list during the 2017 elections.