Ex-member of Armenian ruling party elected to Constitutional Court amidst concerns of bias

Vladimir Vardanyan, a former MP from the ruling Civil Contract party, has been elected as a judge of Armenia’s Constitutional Court. Critics have raised concerns about his appointment, given his previous affiliation with Civil Contract.

Vardanyan was elected in a secret vote in parliament on Tuesday, with 67 of 107 MPs, allegedly all the Civil Contract members, voting in his favour.

Vardanyan will be sworn in during Thursday’s parliamentary session.

He had held various positions at the Constitutional Court since 2003, most recently serving as Head of Staff from April 2018. The following year, he was elected to Armenia’s Parliament, first representing the ruling My Step alliance, and later the Civil Contract party starting from 2021.

Since 2019, Vardanyan has chaired the parliamentary Committee on State and Legal Affairs.

Ahead of his election, Vardanyan terminated his membership in the Civil Contract party on 13 March, the same day President Vahagn Khachaturyan nominated him to the Constitutional Court. A few days later, on 19 March, he submitted his resignation from parliament.

Critics have argued that Vardanyan’s appointment mirrors a move made by Armenia’s previous government, when Hrayr Tovmasyan, a former member of the then-ruling Republican Party, was elected to the Constitutional Court in 2018.

Vardanyan will succeed Tovmasyan as a Constitutional Court judge. Tovmasyan had also served as chair of the parliamentary Committee on State and Legal Affairs and resigned from the post on the same day he was nominated.

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Addressing concerns voiced by the opposition, Vardanyan vowed to be impartial and uphold the constitution if elected by pointing to the oath he would take as a judge and emphasising that failing to uphold it would carry legal consequences.

Ahead of the vote, 14 civil society organisations issued a joint statement calling on parliament ‘to refrain from electing’ Vardanyan. They cited Armenia’s legislation and constitution as prohibiting Constitutional Court judges from being affiliated with a political party or engaging in political activity.

They noted that even though those provisions applied to the period following a judge’s appointment, ‘their evident purpose is, first and foremost, to exclude any links between a Constitutional Court judge and political forces’.

Although Vardanyan terminated his membership in the ruling party, the civil society organisations have said the move was not convincing, pointing to his active involvement in politics for over seven years.

‘Such steps cannot guarantee the severance of political and party ties or eliminate political influence, including ideological alignment with the respective political force, which is a natural phenomenon’, the statement read.

The statement also said that the same overt political affiliation was criticised by then-opposition MP Nikol Pashinyan, when under ex-President Serzh Sargsyan’s tenure, Tovmasyan was nominated for the same position in 2018.

Some media outlets have speculated that the authorities were also considering Vardanyan for the position of the president of the Constitutional Court.

The current president, Arman Dilanyan, was elected in October 2020 with a term of six years, which will expire this October.

With Vardanyan’s election, all judges of Armenia’s Constitutional Court have now been appointed during Pashinyan’s rule.

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