RAW CONCEPTION

Aravot.am
07 April 06

The jurist Vardan Poghosian marks in this way the conception of the
project of the law about «Granting dual citizenship in the RA
the Armenians of abroad’ .

Examining the text of conception, which was published yesterday in the
` Republic Armenia’ newspaper and replaced in yerkir.am site Vardan
Poghosian has found out contradictions. And the most important of it
are different formulations about grounds of granting dual
citizenship. According to «Yerkir» «a person of
Armenian nationality besides citizenship of other state is granted by
the RA citizenship by by evincing facts.’ While some conditions are
mentioned in the `RA’ for being granted by dual citizenship. `An
Armenian person is granted by the RA citizenship besides the
citizenship of other country in the following cases; After living in
the RA, according to evincing facts of his Armenian origin, the person
must pay a certain percent of his three year income to the RA tax
service as a national tribute.’

According to Vardan Poghosian the division of these two projects shows
that the authors of the conception don’t have entire and exact
apprehension how they want to solve the problem of granting the RA
citizenship to the Armenians from Diaspora’.

But he affirmed that both published documents are `rather raw, full of
discrepant positions and don’t settle the main problem which had been
risen after constitutional amendments’. He also mentioned that it is
mentioned in the project of the conception that they should adopt a
law `About dual citizenship’ or to make some changes in the law `About
Citizenship’. Vardan Poghosian mentioned as the most important
omission of the conception; `It is foreseen to settle such positions
by the law which are impossible to settle by the law.

It is spoken of military service and tax obligations. These are such
positions, which can be settled by international bilateral
agreements. Even if we adopt such positions in our law they want act
towards the opposite state. And if an international agreement is
signed, its positions can be different from the RA law and in that
case, according to our Constitution, the positions of international
agreement will be valid.’

According to Mr. Poghosian the conception has remained unclear one of
the core problems, the settlement of the problem of electoral right;
`I think if you ask questions the authors of the conception whether
the dual citizen can become the RA President or NA deputy they will
give discrepant answers’.

We reminded that we had asked the ARF leaders, one of them said that
the dual citizen can become the RA President and deputy, another said
that they can determine the list of posts which only the RA citizen
have right to fill. ` Someone says a thing, the other says just the
opposite, but it isn’t important.

The important thing is that the government can’t settle any problem, –
Vardan Poghosian noticed. And the problem of public service and
filling state important posts isn’t also settled. Human rights will be
infringed if this problem isn’t settled by law’.

Anna Israelian