January 17, an extraordinary session was convened on the initiative of the National Assembly deputies.

The agenda, in accordance with the Rules of Procedure, was proposed by the initiators and included one issue: discussions on the draft Constitution of the Republic of Artsakh. The discussion on the draft Constitution was suspended at the plenary session on December 29, 2016.

In his speech, Chairman of the specialized commission on constitutional reforms under the President of NKR, the Head of the National Assembly Ashot Ghoulyan, summarized the work carried out by the specialized committee after discussions were suspended, noting that detailed examination of the recommendations of the factions and deputies was carried out, the results of which were presented by the authors of the proposals on January 13.

Thereafter, member of the Specialized Commission, the official representative of the President for presenting the draft Constitution in the National Assembly, Minister of Justice of the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh Ararat Danielyan presented brief statistics on the proposals.

Thus, the overall picture of the deputies’ and factions’ proposals presented to the Specialized Commission on Constitutional Reforms on the draft Constitution of the Republic of Artsakh is as follows: 

 “Motherland” faction - 1

"Dashnaktsutyun” faction - 36

“Movement-88” - 38

Lyudmila Barseghyan - 3

Armo Tsatryan - 11

Vardges Baghryan - 13

Davit Melkumyan - 4

Arthur Tovmasyan - 1

Ramela Dadayan - 2

Gagik Petrosyan and Arsen Arstamyan – 75

“Overall, 184 proposals were submitted, 19 of which were repetitive in contents.

30 out of all submitted proposals have been accepted, of which 17 have been wholly accepted and 13 partially accepted. 154 proposals have not been accepted, 13 of which for non-compliance to the conceptual principles of the Constitution, 25 on the grounds of interrelatedness and non-compliance to the initial proposal,” said Ararat Danielyan.

The representative of the President mentioned that the draft Constitution underwent a professional and linguistic examination.

The discussions were resumed from the stage of exchange of views. All the factions of the National Assembly and a number of deputies expressed opinions concerning the draft Constitution.

“It is not about a contest of political forces and certain deputies. All of us are interested in having better Constitution for our country and, as we already have certain traditions in this sphere, that maturity should be expressed by adopting the Constitution in 2017,” emphasized the Chairman of Specialized Commission Ashot Ghoulyan.

The representative of the President made final speech by presenting the draft Constitution. He also introduced the main changes of the draft Constitution that were done on the basis of proposals from factions and MPs of the National Assembly.

Taking as a basis Point "a" of Part 3 of Article 73 of the NA Rules of Procedure, the representative of the President proposed the Parliament to give consent to the matter of putting the draft Constitution – modified based on acceptable for the President proposals – to a referendum.

The 28 deputies, present at the session, voted 20 "for" and 7 "against", with one abstention, to adopt a resolution on the NKR NA consent on the initiative of the President of the Republic of Artsakh to put the draft Constitution to a referendum.