The timing of publishing the new constitutional draft, a commitment undertaken by the Civil Contract party during the election campaign, was discussed at a meeting of the party’s governing board, Justice Minister Srbuhi Galyan said.

Asked why the text had not been published earlier, she responded: “This is not a unilateral decision — whether to publish it or not. We decided not to publish it, so we have not published it. If we decide to publish it, we will publish it,” according to 1lurer.am .

The minister added that the draft will be made public after it is finalized, as the government is still waiting for comments from several partners.

“We will need one or two weeks to collect and consolidate those opinions. After that, we will hold one or two more discussions and decide whether we are ready to publish it or not. As for why we did not publish it earlier, I have spoken about this many times and explained that the text was not ready because several of our partners had simply not yet submitted their observations,” Galyan said.

Responding to remarks that the ruling party, with 61 parliamentary mandates, lacks the numbers needed to pass constitutional amendments, Galyan said the situation has not changed.

“If the question is whether the situation has changed in that regard, I can tell you that it has not. Even today, the government does not have a constitutional majority. We have said that changing the Constitution has been on our agenda since the revolution. It was a political commitment that we undertook and are prepared to fulfill. Publishing the text of a new Constitution and discussing it with the public are part of that commitment. What happens after that, time will tell.

We will do our work and measure the level of public demand. Our opposition colleagues will also assess public demand if they decide in the future to take their mandates. Then they, or all of us together, will make the appropriate decisions,” the minister said.

Galyan added that the authorities neither intend nor have the ability to keep the process behind closed doors, Aysor.am reports.

“Our primary goal is to begin a discussion with the people and open that page. After that, we need to understand what kind of response we receive,” she said.

Earlier, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced that a referendum on the adoption of a new Constitution is planned for 2027, stressing that it is exclusively a matter of domestic policy. He also stated his view that the new Constitution should not contain a reference to the Declaration of Independence.

For an extended period, Azerbaijan has been demanding that Armenia remove the reference to the Declaration of Independence from its Constitution. Representatives of Azerbaijan reiterated that position following the elections held in Armenia on June 7.