The Court Dismissed the Application

On April 13th, the Court of First Instance of Lori region dismissed the application of the group planning to initiate local referendum against the Regional Electoral Commissions #30. The group claimed to invalidate the 8a decision of the commission made on April 3, 2007.
Justification: According to the court, the issue of impeaching the community head by an initiative group cannot be put to local referendum. The 1st part of article 5 of the law “On Local Referendum” does not foresee such a thing.

The court considered proved that the decision of the Regional Electoral Commissions #30 on rejecting the registration of the initiative group was justified and proceeded from the demands of the law.
  Objection: The initiative group insists that the decision of the commission is not in line with the 7th part of the article 7 of the law “On Local Referendum,” because the bases of the rejection are not mentioned there. Besides, the right to hold a local referendum is defined by the article 107 of the Constitution.
  The initiative group is going to apply to the Constitutional Court for appealing the discrepancy existing in the provisions of the law and for ensuring the application of the constitutional norm.
  We should remind that on April 3rd, the Regional Electoral Commissions #30 rejected to register the initiative group that wanted to hold a local referendum on “Impeaching Samvel Darbinyan, the mayor of Vanadzor.” Not agreeing to the decision, the initiative group applied to court claiming to invalidate the decision of the regional election commission #30 made on April 3, and to oblige them to register the group. The decision of the regional election commission #30 to reject registration was made without any justification. During the court sitting, they justified the rejection by stating that only avagani (the counselors) are entitled the right to hold referendum.
  The members of the initiative group think that the decision does not proceed from the Armenian legislation. It violates the right of citizens to hold local referendum, which is defined by RA Constitution.