Pashinian made a case for changing the current Armenian constitution in an hour-long video address to the nation aired on Wednesday evening. He said this is a key element of his concept of “real Armenia” dismissed by his detractors as a smokescreen for making further concessions to Azerbaijan as well as Turkey.
Justice Minister Srbuhi Galian reiterated on Thursday that a government panel headed by her will “do everything” to draft the new constitution before the country’s next general elections expected in June 2026.
“The instruction we received is aimed at having the new text of the constitution ready by the 2026 elections,” she said, adding that it will likely be put on a referendum after the polls.
Galian’s predecessor, Grigor Minasian, said in August that the referendum will not take place before 2027.
Galian is the current head of the Constitutional Reform Council that was formed by Pashinian in 2022 with the initial aim of proposing amendments to the current constitution. Pashinian changed the ad hoc body’s mandate last May, saying that it must draft a “new constitution” from scratch before January 2027. The move came as the Azerbaijani leaders continued to make the signing of a peace treaty with Armenia conditional on a change of its constitution which they say contains territorial claims to Azerbaijan.
Baku specifically wants Yerevan to remove a constitutional preamble that mentions Armenia’s 1990 declaration of independence, which in turn cites a 1989 unification act adopted by the legislative bodies of Soviet Armenia and the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast.
Galian did not rule out that the preamble will be excluded from the draft new constitution. “We have no final decision yet on that issue,” she told reporters.
Pashinian, who repeatedly criticized the 1990 declaration last year, made no mention of the preamble or Baku’s demands in Wednesday’s televised remarks.
“The strategic aim of adopting a new constitution is a transition from the residual practices of a stateless nation to the practices of state-building people,” he said before embarking on a lengthy monologue on “real Armenia” and “national values” underpinning it.
Opposition leaders dismissed Pashinian’s latest explanations, saying that he is simply trying to dupe Armenians into backing yet another concession to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. Accordingly, they pledged to continue strongly resisting his drive to change the constitution.
“Aliyev’s demand must not be met,” said Artur Khachatrian, a lawmaker representing the main opposition Hayastan alliance.
Aliyev has also set other preconditions for making peace with Armenia, including the opening of a land corridor to Azerbaijan’s Nakhichevan exclave.