Armenian Parliament rejects opposition motion on national crisis

The National Assembly of Armenia has declined to include in its plenary session agenda an opposition-initiated statement on the National Crisis and the Governance Failure.

The proposal was defeated with 24 votes in favor, 48 against, and 2 abstentions, Caliber.Az reports, citing Armenian media.

The draft statement was submitted by the opposition faction I Have Honor and was also backed by MPs from the Armenia alliance. The ruling Civil Contract party voted unanimously against the motion.

Two independent members of parliament — Hovik Agazaryan, and Hakob Aslanyan, both of whom had previously withdrawn from the ruling party’s parliamentary faction — abstained from the vote.

In response to the initiative, Hayk Konjoryan, head of the Civil Contract parliamentary faction, reaffirmed his party's firm stance, declaring that they would continue to reject all “stillborn” attempts at impeachment.

Vladimir Vardanyan, Chair of the Parliamentary Committee on State and Legal Affairs and an MP from Civil Contract, clarified the legal framework under Armenia’s current parliamentary model. He explained that, unlike presidential systems where impeachment procedures apply directly to the head of state, Armenia’s governance structure allows for a vote of no confidence in the government — a process that cannot be triggered by a simple statement, as proposed by I Have the Honor faction.

Vardanyan further outlined the formal procedure: under the Law on the Rules of Procedure of the National Assembly, one-third of MPs must first sign on to initiate a no-confidence motion. Only thereafter can the matter be brought to the floor for debate and vote. The opposition’s draft, he noted, failed to meet these legal requirements and thus contained procedural inaccuracies.

In parallel, the I Have the Honor faction has launched a separate effort to initiate impeachment proceedings. However, the process requires the backing of 36 MPs to be officially tabled, and 54 votes to pass. At present, the combined number of MPs from Armenia and I Have the Honor stands at 34 — two short of the initial threshold. Independent MPs Agazaryan and Aslanyan have so far withheld their support, preventing the process from moving forward.

By Vafa Guliyeva