ZALINIAN: CONSTITUTION IS OUR PASSPORT
Azat Artsakh, Republic of Nagorno Karabakh [NKR]
11 Dec 2006
On November 30 the head of the Taskforce on Constitution, Attorney
General Armen Zalinian met with the intelligentsia of NKR at Artsakh
State University.
Mr. Zalinian said these discussions are intended to find out the
opinion and expectations of the people of Artsakh, and the purpose is
not propaganda, especially that as an attorney general he does not have
such a right. And since the draft constitution has been distributed to
people, the participants of the debate were acquainted with the text
and the meeting started with questions regarding the role, necessity
and importance of the basic law. In answer to these questions Armen
Zalinian said, "Sometimes people tend to think that the content
of the Constitution is not important, and it is important to have a
constitution. This point of view is illogical and unacceptable because
both circumstances are important and one depends on the other. After
all, this is the basic law of the country which should underlie the
social relations, our life, development, and if it is imperfect,
the present and the future of our people and the state will be
endangered. Therefore, it is wrong to think that we need to have a
constitution, even if it is a bad one." Emphasizing the role of the
constitution as a legal document for the present and future of people,
Armen Zalinian said it must be perfect in political, social, economic
and all the other aspects. "We need a document to regulate the public
relations," he said. According to Armen Zalinian, the constitution is
the passport of a state. We haven’t had a passport so far to present
to the world what system of values we confess as a state. The world
will have a picture of our state when it reads the basic law of our
country. Therefore, the content of the document is highly important,
he said. The attorney general also dwelled on the p rovision that every
citizen has the right to turn to government agencies with requests and
proposals and get a response within a reasonable period. He stated that
the term reasonable was applied by the European Court of Human Rights
and is considered as an attribute of a civilized state. With regard
to the question on the attitude of our neighbors to the adoption of
the Constitution, Armen Zalinian said, "Friends will congratulate,
foes will be sad. Those who hesitate will start thinking that it is
worthwhile to be our friends. Those who don’t know anything about us
will start to study it. As for our recognition, I already said this
is our passport. We are presenting our system of values. After every
election the world starts speaking about our political and civilized
level. And every time we prove that we are a democratic country."