RAW CONCEPTION

The jurist Vardan Poghosian marks in this way the conception of the project of the law about «Granting dual citizenship in the RA the Armenians of abroad”.

Examining the text of conception, which was published yesterday in the “Republic Armenia” newspaper and replaced in yerkir.am site Vardan Poghosian has found out contradictions. And the most important of it are different formulations about grounds of granting dual citizenship. According to «Yerkir» «a person of Armenian nationality besides citizenship of other state is granted by the RA citizenship by by evincing facts.” While some conditions are mentioned in the “RA” for being granted by dual citizenship. “An Armenian person is granted by the RA citizenship besides the citizenship of other country in the following cases; After living in the RA, according to evincing facts of his Armenian origin, the person must pay a certain percent of his three year income to the RA tax service as a national tribute.” According to Vardan Poghosian the division of these two projects shows that the authors of the conception don’t have entire and exact apprehension how they want to solve the problem of granting the RA citizenship to the Armenians from Diaspora”.
But he affirmed that both published documents are “rather raw, full of discrepant positions and don’t settle the main problem which had been risen after constitutional amendments”. He also mentioned that it is mentioned in the project of the conception that they should adopt a law “About dual citizenship” or to make some changes in the law “About Citizenship”. Vardan Poghosian mentioned as the most important omission of the conception; “It is foreseen to settle such positions by the law which are impossible to settle by the law. It is spoken of military service and tax obligations. These are such positions, which can be settled by international bilateral agreements. Even if we adopt such positions in our law they want act  towards the opposite state. And if an international agreement is signed, its positions can be different from the RA law and in that case, according to our Constitution, the positions of international agreement will be valid.”
According to Mr. Poghosian the conception has remained unclear one of the core problems, the settlement of the problem of electoral right; ‘I think if you ask questions the authors of the conception whether the dual citizen can become the RA President or NA deputy they will give discrepant answers”.
We reminded that we had asked the ARF leaders, one of them said that the dual citizen can become the RA President and deputy, another said that they can determine the list of posts which only the RA citizen have right to fill. “Someone says a thing, the other says just the opposite, but it isn’t important. The important thing is that the government can’t settle any problem, - Vardan Poghosian noticed. And the problem of public service and filling state important posts isn’t also settled. Human rights will be infringed if this problem isn’t settled by law”.

Anna Israelian