DUAL CITIZENSHIP IS STILL SUBJECT FOR ARGUMENTS
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| 18:35:00 | 20-05-2005 | Social |
Today the Civic Debates Club had organized the following seminar in the
hotel “Yerevan” with the theme “Dual Citizenship in Armenia”. United
Labor Party member Grigor Ghonjeyan and coalition member Hrayr
Karapetyan were invited to the seminar. Both of them are NA deputies,
and the latter was not present at the seminar.
Grigor Ghonjeyan represented the point of view of the United Labor
Party to eliminate the prohibition of dual citizenship in the
Constitution. Nevertheless, they mentioned that the Constitution
must regulate the whole field of dual citizenship and not leave
anything to be regulated by further laws. The reason, according to
Mr. Ghonjeyan, was that their party is a religion of free ideas and
they do not encourage any prohibition of the basic freedom of people.
The draft Constitution processed by the coalition has already been
adopted by the Parliament majority. By this draft the prohibition of
dual citizenship is eliminated, but all the other issues are left to
be regulated by further laws.
The speaker of today’s seminar brought the example of Russia, “Russia
has not adopted dual citizenship. If today we adopt it and give the
citizens of other countries the right to take part in elections,
and if tomorrow Russia adopts it too, the fate of our country will
be decided directly in Kremlin”.
The ULP member defended this point of view with the fact that by
their draft the people define with a constitutional referendum that in
Armenia the dual citizen cannot have the right to elect or be elected.
Nevertheless, there was no political debate, as during the meeting
no opposite ideas sounded.