Constitutional Court Rejects Election Postponement

RFE/RL reports that the Armenian Constitutional Court has rejected an appeal by presidential candidate and former head of state, Levon Ter-Petrossian, to postpone the 19 February presidential election by two weeks because of “insurmountable obstacles.”

Interestingly, the head of the Constitutional Court, Gagik Harutiunian, served as Ter-Petrossian’s vice-president and prime minister from 1991-1992. In 1996, just before Ter-Petrossian’s disputed re-election, Harutiunian was appointed as president of the Constitutional Court.

In its appeal to the country’s highest judicial body, the Ter-Petrosian campaign claimed that the election coverage by the state-controlled Armenian Public Television, which has been highly critical of the ex-president, constitutes such an obstacle. Ter-Petrosian’s representatives spent more than an hour trying to substantiate the claim before the panel of nine judges headed by Gagik Harutiunian.

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In its verdict read out by Harutiunian, the Constitutional Court ruled that the alleged obstacles are not serious enough to be considered insurmountable. At the same time the court said after four-hour deliberations that Ter-Petrosian’s complaints are “legitimate” and should be addressed by the NCTR, the Central Election Commission and lower-level courts. It warned that their failure to do so could “generate distrust in the election process.”