Armenia: Ruling party to sack opposition's deputy parliament speaker

PanARMENIAN.Net - The ruling Civil Contract party has made a decision to remove Ishkhan Saghatelyan from the opposition Armenia bloc from the post of Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly.

MP Artur Hovhannisyan from Civil Contract said Tuesday, June 28 that lawmaker Vahe Hakobyan, also from Armenia bloc, will be sacked as the head of the Standing Committee on Economic Affairs.

President of the National Assembly Alen Simonyan said earlier in the day that Civil Contract was going to discuss the possibility of firing opposition deputies for missing out on work due to a months-long campaign demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.

Days earlier, opposition lawmaker from "I Have Honor" bloc, Chairman of Homeland party Artur Vanetsyan resigned. Vanetsyan went on a sit-in in mid-April and launched a campaign against Pashinyan and his government. Pashinian came under fire after he and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev agreed to start drafting a bilateral peace treaty to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and set up a joint commission on demarcating the borders.