From 1 to 10 January, 2020, the “Media Advocate” Initiative followed online media reports on the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia. 35 leading Armenian news agencies have been monitored.
In the specified period, 294 articles were declared, 128 of which were negative, 22 were positive and 144 were neutral.
Many negative articles were published on the National Assembly. According to publications, there is a problem with the Sevan water abstraction. It is noted that in 2019 the government with the permission of the National Assembly decided to increase the volume of water released from Sevan in 2019 for irrigation by 170 million cubic meters. It was later announced that the volume was not fully used. It is also noted that: “Several months ago the head of the Water Committee at the National Assembly called the phenomena of raising and lowering the Sevan level strange. Before that, the water committee had insisted they had not taken a single gram of water since September 24, but the lake had lowered by 3 cm.”
The National Assembly has also been criticized because of the escalation of Iran-US relations. The news outlets note that the Speaker of the National Assembly did not state anything regarding these events. It is also mentioned that the NA Standing Committee on Foreign Relations is also inactive, which seems to have not noticed the situation in those days.
The law on early retirement of Constitutional Court judges has also been criticized. Many see corruption here and find it unacceptable. It is mentioned that if the judges are bad and corrupt, then why should they receive a high pension from the state?
Former Deputy Chief of Staff of the National Assembly, Arsen Babayan wrote that law no longer exists because it was adopted with violations; “MP S. Grigoryan made suggestions which were accepted by the committee with violation of the requirements of Article 42 of RA NA Rules of Procedure. That is, the proposals were not formulated as a new edition (paragraph 5), or as a new amendment or supplement (paragraph 6). Those suggestions did not have any clear formulation.”
