NKR CONSTITUTIONAL COURT

Azat Artsakh – Nagorno Karabakh Republic [NKR]
19 July 05

On June 8 the session of the NKR Constitutional Court took place.
There might be nothing extraordinary about this if such meetings were
not so rare. Somehow this session passed unnoticed by the mass media,
which is not good because the institution of the Constitutional Court
which is one of the principal attributes of a state is quite a new
thing for our society. The action of the NKR Constitutional Court is
set down by the article 20 of the NKR law on courts, by which the NKR
Supreme Court is vested with the powers of the NKR Constitutional
Court and acts according to the Law on the Constitutional Court
of the Republic of Armenia. The NKR Constitutional Court a)
decides the conformity of the laws and decisions adopted by the NKR
National Assembly, the decrees and orders of the president of the
republic, the decisions of the government with the constitution; b)
judges the disputes on the results of referendums, presidential and
parliamentary elections; 3) recognizes the obstacles occurring before
the presidential candidate of the republic as irresistible or null;
4) decides on the existence of sufficient ground for impeachment of
the president of the republic, etc. The Constitutional Court can be
sued by: the president of the republic; one third of the members of
parliament; presidential and parliamentary candidates for disputes
on the results of elections; the government in the case defined
by the article 59 of the Constitution. The readers may wonder what
the citizens who do not have identical rights are supposed to do. In
accordance with the NKR legislation the citizens of NKR have the right
to go to ordinary courts (the NKR Court of First Instance, the Court
of Appeal, the Court of Cassation). And the questions which fall under
the jurisdiction of the Constitutional Court can be addressed to the
deputies of the NKR National Assembly, and in case of necessity one
third of the parliament appeals to the Constitutional Court. Now
about the latest meeting of the Constitutional Court of NKR. The
parliamentary candidate Arthur Hakobian nominated from the electoral
district 20 appealed to the NKR Constitutional Court to annul the
results of the parliamentary election because of severe violations
of the NKR Electoral Code during the poll. The Constitutional Court
observed the essential principles of the process, i.e. brief (art. 21
(1) b); oral argument (art. 21 (2) c); continuity (art. 22); equality
of litigants. At the same time it is not clear why there were only
two justices if the Law on the Constitutional Court provides for 5
judges. What if there is a split? The session of the Constitutional
Court revealed the faults of the NKR Electoral Code, which affect the
course of making the results of elections valid or invalid. These
are the lack of a defined procedure of lodging a complaint against
the election commissions in the article 41 of the Electoral Code;
defining of breaches affecting the results of the election. In the
end I would like to point out the professionalism of the justices
of the NKR Constitutional Court who objectively heard the appeal
of the parliamentary candidate of the election district 20 Arthur
Hakobian and made a ruling in accordance with the NKR Law on the
Constitutional Court.

G. SAFARIAN. 19-07-2005