The pro-government majority in the National Assembly set up in February 2022 an ad hoc commission with the stated aim of examining the causes of Armenia’s defeat in the war, assessing the Armenian government’s and military’s actions and looking into what had been done for national defense before the hostilities. Opposition lawmakers boycotted the commission, saying that its primary mission is to whitewash Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s wartime incompetence and disastrous decision making.
The commission chairman, Andranik Kocharian, submitted a report on its findings to Simonian more than a month ago. The document was expected to be mostly released and debated during a plenary session of the National Assembly later in September. However, Simonian blocked the discussion, saying that the panel breached an 18-month legal limit on its activities. Kocharian strongly denied missing any legal deadlines and insisted on the report’s inclusion on the parliament agenda.
Simonian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Thursday that Kocharian will be able to present the report during a parliamentary hearing to be held behind the closed doors. But the speaker clearly failed to placate the fellow member of the ruling Civil Contract party.
A spokeswoman for Simonian, Movses Harutiunian, said on Monday that the report has been deposited with a division of the National Assembly staff dealing with classified documents. Any parliament deputy with security clearance can read it there, he said. Kocharian did not react to the announcement.
Opposition members of the Armenian parliament’s standing committee on defense and security said they will request access to the report despite being convinced that it is not objective. One of them, Gegham Manukian, claimed that Kocharian was barred from presenting it on the parliament floor because even he did not manage to portray Pashinian as an “angel” and cover up the premier’s mishandling of the disastrous war.
Some commentators have suggested that Pashinian simply does not want to see a renewed public debate on his handling of the war even if Kocharian’s commission has almost certainly absolved him of any blame for the six-week hostilities that left at least 3,800 Armenian soldiers dead.
Pashinian sparked a fresh opposition uproar in late August when he admitted rejecting in 2019 a Karabakh peace plan jointly drafted by the United States. Russia and France. He claimed that its implementation would have led to the “loss of Armenia’s independence and statehood.”