President Sargsyan: We Need Opposition as a Balancing Power

President Serzh Sargsyan in an interview to leading TV broadcasters in Armenia late evening on  December 2 referring to the necessity of constitutional reforms particularly noted.

"If we don’t do this, we will have stagnation, if we don’t do this, we will again have a personalised power. We are obliged to do this, because parliamentary system entails more accountability and transparency. If the opposition in the parliament doesn’t have the right to establish, for example, Commissions of Enquiry, what other arguments shall the opposition bring in the parliament to make the government correct its mistakes or otherwise support its policies in the eyes of the public?" official page of President reports.

"We are not endorsing these amendments with the aim of widening the powers of the opposition, but we are obliged to do that in order to balance the strong executive from one side, and an opposition that has all the required authority, on the other", - Sargsyan concluded, adding that there are no other mechanisms to ensure this balance of power in the political system.

"It is the duty of the authorities to make sure the opposition functions normally and acts as a balancing factor," - President Sargsyan remarked.