The Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) is a nominally independent body tasked with monitoring Armenian courts and protecting them against outside interference.
The party led by Pashinian nominated lawyer Aleksandr Sirunian for membership in the SJC despite his political affiliation and systematic use of profanities in social media posts defending the Armenian government. Sirunian for years attacked opposition figures and many other people on his Facebook page which was disabled following the nomination announced last fall.
Opposition lawmakers cited excerpts from some of those posts on Monday during a heated parliament debate on his candidacy.
One of the posts was made before Azerbaijan’s September 2023 military offensive in Karabakh that forced the region’s entire remaining population to flee to Armenia. Sirunian urged the Armenian authorities to round up Karabakh Armenians evacuated for medical reasons and to keep them in a remote Armenian region “until you figure out which country will take them in.”
“The very fact that you are now speaking from this podium is a disgrace,” Agnesa Khamoyan of the main opposition Hayastan alliance told Sirunian. “You should have been sitting in the dock for spreading hate speech.”
Sirunian did not retract or apologize for his offensive Facebook comments, saying that they were “taken out of context.”
“Can you tell us the context in which you swore at people?” scoffed Artur Khachatrian, another parliament deputy from Hayastan.
Sirunian, who had worked as a prosecutor under Armenia’s former governments, then claimed that his Facebook account containing Pashinian’s pictures is a “collective page” that was also used by other people. He did not name any of them.
The ruling party’s decision to install him as a member of the SJC was also condemned by more than a dozen Western-funded civil society groups.
“This candidate's inappropriate public behavior and vocabulary is persistent and ongoing and is incompatible with the principles of integrity,” they said in a statement released ahead of the parliament debate. It accused him of “spreading hatred towards the people of Artsakh.”
Civil Contract deputies defended the nomination and hit back at the opposition during the debate. Still, parliament speaker Alen Simonian did not exclude on Tuesday that the uproar will deter the parliament controlled by Pashinian’s party from appointing Sirunian to the judicial watchdog.
“Everything is possible,” Simonian told journalists.
Hours before the parliament vote scheduled for Wednesday afternoon, Sirunian told the pro-government news website civic.am that he “voluntarily” decided to withdraw his candidacy. He attributed his decision to questions raised during Monday’s debate about the legality of some of his business deals. He said he does not want to damage the “image” of the ruling party and the judicial branch.
Khamoyan dismissed the explanation, saying that Sirunian was simply ordered by Pashinian to drop out.
The SJC has wide-ranging powers, including the right to nominate, sanction and even dismiss judges. The judicial watchdog fired dozens of judges, who fell foul of the government, when it was headed by Karen Andreasian, a former ruling party member, from 2022-2024.
Andreasian was among six senior state officials who tendered resignation in November at the behest of Pashinian. The prime minister said he “asked” Andreasian to step down because he was unhappy with some of the decisions made by Armenian courts. Opposition leaders and some legal experts said the “request” was illegal and proved that the SJC is controlled by Pashinian.
