In an interview with Infocom, Mr. Artyom Mesropyan, lawyer, expert of the Armenian Լawyers’ Association NGO touched upon the regulations of the RA Law on Local Referendum, the procedures for initiating, conducting and summarizing the results, and the reasons why that institute is not widely in Armenia.
According to him, the local referendum institute is important because the residents of the community have the opportunity to directly participate in the resolution of issues of community importance and decide through their voting what solution this or that issue should have.
The local referendum institute is not very popular in Armenia, but there are countries where this institute really works and very good results are being registered, such as Switzerland. We had a case of a local referendum in Armenia in 2015, when the government initiated the process of community enlargement, and the previous Constitution stipulated that local community referendums would have to understand the opinion of the residents of those communities through local referendum. Then, after the constitutional reform, the local referendum, a means of raising the opinion of the community’s inhabitants, was removed. And now, by enlarging or merging communities with existing regulations, holding a referendum is not a must. It can be said that this norm was backward. The constitution provides a mechanism according to which the National Assembly has to hear the opinion of the community before the law on administrative reform is adopted, but it is discretionary.
Speaking about the reasons for the institute not being applied in Armenia, he noted that: “There is a problem of legal awareness, there is a problem of employment of community residents; people do not have the extra time or care they need to take part in community management or take the initiative. “
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