A festive event was held at the Alexander Spendiaryan National Academic Opera and Ballet Theater on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Constitution of the Republic of Armenia.
The event was attended by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, President Vahagn Khachaturyan, President of the Constitutional Court Arman Dilanyan, representatives of the legislative and executive branches, as well as heads of diplomatic missions accredited in Armenia.
Prime Minister Pashinyan, President Khachaturyan, and the Chairman of the Constitutional Court delivered congratulatory speeches.
In his remarks, Prime Minister Pashinyan congratulated everyone on Constitution Day and the 30th anniversary of the Constitution and presented the ideology of "Real Armenia."
He elaborated on how the Constitution has been intertwined with the ideology of Real Armenia over the past year. According to the Prime Minister, it has become clear that one cannot fully understand or assess the concept of Real Armenia without addressing the Constitution, as the two are directly connected.
“It is connected to the slogan "The homeland is the state; if you love your homeland, strengthen your state," which in turn is connected to the 500-year history of our people. Why am I speaking about this on Constitution Day? Having uninterruptedly loved the homeland for 500 years, sometimes even hating the state, is it possible that our civic subconscious has not overcome that subconscious of loving the homeland and resisting the state?
He argued that resistance to the state has become a reflex and that this mindset must be overcome. In his view, many Armenians continue to perceive the legal system established in the country over the past 35 years as something imposed on them, rather than a framework created by their own will for governing life in Armenia.
"The Constitution, as I see it, is an agreement among citizens about their relationships with each other, between individuals, between citizens and communities, communities and the government, and more broadly, an agreement on the legal order of the country, which should be enshrined in the Constitution," Pashinyan stated.
Addressing the lack of public identification with the legal system, the Prime Minister said he has come to a widely known but rarely spoken conclusion: the Constitutions adopted since 1995 have left open the question of whether they were truly the result of the people’s free will and free voting. In his view, this ambiguity undermines public trust.
According to Pashinyan, Armenia’s Constitution and legal system were developed by respectable experts but they did not emerge through a transparent and participatory democratic process. As a result, many citizens continue to see the homeland as a platform for resisting the state rather than as a shared civic project.
He emphasized that Armenia now needs a new Constitution-one that reflects the current reality and is adopted through the free will of the people.
"That reality is this: The Republic of Armenia tells its citizens that the homeland and the state are no longer separate. Unlike the previous period of our millennia-long history, our message today must be clear. And that message must be articulated in a new Constitution adopted through the free will of the Armenian people. That Constitution must say: citizen of the Republic of Armenia, you are the state, you are the Republic of Armenia," Pashinyan concluded.
