The authorities need permission from the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC), a state body overseeing Armenian courts, to launch such criminal proceedings. The SJC also has the exclusive authority to take disciplinary action against judges.
Such decisions have until now had to be backed by at least seven of the SJC’s ten members. Under a bill pushed through the National Assembly by its pro-government majority, five members will be enough to give the green light to punishing judges accused of various violations.
Amendments lowering this threshold were not included in the initial version of the bill approved by the parliament in the first reading last month. They were unexpectedly added shortly before its passage in the second and final reading on Wednesday.
Opposition parliamentarians deplored this fact. They also said Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s administration will use the amendments to step up pressure on independent-minded judges reluctant to execute government orders.
Artsvik Minasian, a senior deputy from the main opposition Hayastan alliance, argued that five members of the SJC were installed by the current and previous parliaments controlled by Pashinian. The other members were chosen by an assembly of the country’s judges.
Vladimir Vartanian, a co-author of the bill representing the ruling Civil Contract party, dismissed the opposition concerns. He claimed that the main purpose of the legislation is to make sure that judges do not commit abuses when multiple vacant seats in the SJC are not filled on time.
The controversial bill was passed two days after an Armenian judge was arrested on charges stemming from a recent decision which he made during an ongoing trial presided over by him.
The judge, Boris Bakhshiyan, has said that he is prosecuted in retaliation for granting bail to a jailed opposition figure late last month. The leadership of Armenia’s Union of Judges has also decried Bakhshiyan’s arrest.
In recent months, Armenian opposition groups, lawyers and some judges have accused Pashinian’s government of seeking to increase government influence on Armenian courts under the guise of judicial reforms. The authorities deny this, insisting that the reforms are aimed at increasing judicial independence.
In a joint statement issued last month, a group of judges charged that the authorities want to curb judicial independence through disciplinary proceedings against them and their colleagues. The number of such proceedings increased significantly last year after a new bill empowered the Armenian Ministry of Justice to demand disciplinary action against judges by the SJC.
There are also growing concerns about the effective suspension of a computerized system of random assignment of all cases to judges. The system using special software was designed to minimize government and law-enforcement officials’ influence on judicial acts.
Last summer, Armenia’s National Security Service (NSS) confiscated the computer carrying the software in what it called a criminal investigation into the integrity of the automated selection of judges. The NSS has still not returned the software, allowing court chairpersons to continue to assign court cases at will.
Opposition figures and lawyers say the authorities are thus able to pick judges, who rarely reject arrest warrants sought by prosecutors, for handling politically motivated cases.
