By Emilio Luciano Cricchio
The office of Armenia’s President has confirmed that President Armen Sarkissian has decided to not sign the draft decree on the dismissal of the Chief of Army General Staff Onik Gasparyan.
President Sarkissian had two options: either to sign the decree or to apply to the Constitutional Court. He didn’t sign the decree, however, nor did he apply to the high court either, instead he applied to the Constitutional Court not to question the draft decree itself, but regarding the Law on military service.
This means that the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces Onik Gasparyan will be relieved of the post of the army chief by March 4, in accordance with the constitution.
The president and the prime minister had been at loggerheads over the past week regarding Gasparyan’s dismissal, with the two branches of government sending the dismissal decree back and forth between each other.
Initially, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan responded to the President’s decision to send back the draft decree on dismissal of Gasparyan with objections, noting that he would send the motion to dismiss Onik Gasparyan to the President of the Republic again, in what has turned into an apparent public row between the head of government and the head of state.
Later, in the afternoon of March 1, Sarkissian and Pashinyan met and held talks.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan dismissed both Lieutenant General Onik Gasparyan and his deputy Tiran Khachatryan on February 25. This led to allegations of a coup attempt after Gasparyan and more than 40 other military leaders signed a statement calling for Pashinyan to resign.
Reportedly, part of the reasoning for the dismissal was that the prime minister was not properly reported to and informed about the situation regarding the Russian Iskander missile system during the Second Karabakh War.
According to the prime minister’s spokeswoman Mane Gevorgyan, “As a result of the combination of facts and data, the prime minister came to the conclusion that the situation was not reported to him accurately.”
Last week, Pashinyan stated in an interview that there were technical problems with several missiles. Thereafter the Russian Ministry of Defense clarified that the Armenian PM had probably been misled and that the Iskander missile system was not used during the 44-day war.
“I am again sending the petition to dismiss the head of the General Staff to the President of the Republic, expecting that it will be signed in accordance with the established procedure,” Pashinyan wrote on Facebook.
Meanwhile, the president released a statement saying he concluded that the dismissal of Gasparyan was unconstitutional after holding meetings with government representatives, extra-parliamentary forces, lawyers, and the command staff of the Armed Forces, before making his decision.
Sarkissian added that the reaction to his returning of the decree with objections is “inadmissibly manipulated and has received an inadequate response.”
The president’s statement reiterated that the President of the Republic “does not support any political force and makes decisions guided exclusively by national interests.”
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