Civil Contract (Armenia)

Civil Contract
Քաղաքացիական Պայմանագիր
Leader Nikol Pashinyan
President Sasun Mikayelyan
Spokesperson Alen Simonyan
Founded December 9, 2013 (2013-12-09) (as public–political union)
May 30, 2015 (2015-05-30) (as political party)
Ideology Armenian nationalism
Liberalism
Anti-corruption
Pro-Europeanism
Political position Centre
National affiliation My Step Alliance
Way Out Alliance
Colors      Blue
National Assembly
5 / 105
Website
civilcontract.am

Civil Contract (Armenian: Քաղաքացիական պայմանագիր, K'aghak'aciakan paymanagir) is a political party in Armenia, which was established on July 24, 2013 as a public–political union. The governing board of the contract was formed on December 9, 2013. On May 30, 2015, it became a political party. The first election the party participated in was the Hrazdan mayoral election in 2016, where the party's candidate, former Hrazdan mayor Sasun Mikayelyan, was defeated by the RPA candidate, incumbent Aram Danielyan.

In the Armenian parliamentary election 2017 and the Yerevan City Council election 2017, Civil Contract took part in the elections as part of the Way Out Alliance (Yelk).

After 2018 Armenian Velvet Revolution led by Nikol Pashinyan, the party along with other members of "Yelk" alliance came to power and it started to represent the ruling alliance in the National Assembly.

Origins of Civil Contract

Civil Contract came to be known for the first time on January 23, 2013, when MP Nikol Pashinyan from the opposition bloc publicized a project in the newspaper Haykakan Zhamanak (the Armenian Times) about establishing a new public-political union.[1] For several months afterwards, the text of the civil contract was discussed on different platforms with different organizations and individuals actively engaged in public-political life of Armenia. On July 24, an updated version of the civil contract was published, and the establishment of a new political union in Armenia, named Civil Contract, was announced.

Civil Contract announced that ahead of its first Treaty Conference, the text of the contract would be worked out and undergo amendments since some points of the document need comments and clarification. The proclamation of those fundamentals would be followed by the creation of a detailed roadmap for the development of each of the mentioned fields.

Governing board of Civil Contract

On December 9, 2013, a press conference at the Ani Plaza hotel presented the Governing Board of the Civil Contract. The governing board was formed in pursuance of the seventh clause of the contract, which states that it is a collegial body that makes decisions on a consensus basis.

The governing board does not have a chairman or a director. The function of the governing board was to carry out the management of Civil Contract as well as to organize the first treaty conference of the contract, during which a new governing board would be elected and a decision would be made about the future organizational and legal form of Civil Contract activities.

Incumbent staff of the governing board

Civil Contract return fund

The Civil Contract Return Fund was established to ensure that the funding of Civil Contract is in compliance with Armenian law, and it aims to organize its activities in line with democratic rules.

The idea is the following: Funds donated to Civil Contract will be stored in the fund's account and vault. The costing will be conducted under the supervision of the board of trustees. The members of the board of trustees are independent from the governing board and exert civilian control over the fund's expenditures.

The 9 clauses of the fundamental document of the civil contract states that “citizens who have donated money or property to the Contract shall have the right to request information on spending, and their demands are to be satisfied within three days' time.”

In other words, the transparency of the donated money to the civil contract is guaranteed not only by existing legislation, but also by the fundamental contract document.

Board of trustees

On February 22, 2014, the Civil Contract board of trustees was announced. On the same day, Haykak Arshamyan was elected the chairman of the board of trustees. Members of the board of trustees are:

  • Lara Aharonian, Women's Resource Center co-founder, director
  • Haykak Arshamyan, PhD in history
  • Levon Bagramyan, economist, political scientist, Washington D.C., US
  • Arthur Ispiryan, musician
  • Levon Hovsepyan, economist
  • Ara Shirinyan, director
  • Maro Matossian, Women's Support Center, director
  • Edgar Manukyan, PhD in economics, Toronto, Canada
  • Sargis Kloyan, entrepreneur

On February 22, 2014, Hakob Simidyan was appointed the director of the fund.

Funding of Civil Contract

On April 26, 2014 the governing board members of Civil Contract published an article entitled "Financing Politics and Civil Contract", in which they touched upon the issues of financing public and political life of Armenia and its transparency.

“Financing politics is one of the essential entangled knots of the history of the Third Republic. How is the public-political activity financed in Armenia? It's a question the proper answer of which is not known. One can guess, put forward hypotheses, but the society does not have a reliable and verifiable answer to the question... The most popular answer is that "we are funded by thousands of our supporters". This is an answer, which generates new questions: whom and how do the supporters give the money? Who takes it and under what conditions? How do others learn whether their retainer has donated that much, more or less money ... ?

From the very first stage of the debates over establishing “civil contract” public–political union the issues about funding the activities of the contract have been the subject of heated debate. How is the contract going to be financed? Who will be financing it? The answers to these questions were principal for us. And if we have serious ambition to achieve fundamental changes in public–political relations, we need to try to work ourselves out of the Armenian traditional funding mechanisms of political activity. We have formulated the problem the following way: if we need 1000 AMD, we need to find not a single person that will give us that money, but we need to find 1000 people each of whom will donate 1 AMD.”

Armenia's Velvet Revolution

On March 31, 2018, Civil Contract leader Nikol Pashinyan and his supporters started a 200 km march from Gyumri, Armenia's second largest city, to the capital, Yerevan, intending to disrupt Armenia's third President, Serzh Sargsyan, from retaining power as Prime Minister upon reaching his constitutional term limit.[3] On April 17, 2018, parallel to Sargsyan's speech and election as Prime Minister, Nikol Pashinyan, in front of the thousands of civilians near the National Assembly of Armenia, announced the start of a national, nonviolent, velvet revolution.[4] On April 22, 2018, a few hours after a brief meeting with Sargsyan, Pashinyan was arrested along with approximately 250 other protestors.[5] After great pressure (blocking streets and mass strikes) of opposition Civil Contract and thousands of civilians, (more than 300,000) forced Serzh Sargsyan to resign on Monday, 23 April 2018.[6] “Nikol Pashinyan was right. I was wrong.The movement of the street is against my office. I'm fulfilling your demands.” Mr Sargsyan said in his statement, after a very short conversation with Nikol Pashinyan in front of the public and media (170 seconds) on Sunday 22 April, a day before resignation.[7] "Thousands of people are on the streets, cheering and hugging each other, jumping up and down and honking their horns ... things happened so quickly, I don't think the crowd was expecting this, but it is exactly what they wanted," Al Jazeera's Robin Forestier-Walker said.[8]

References

  1. ↑ Harutyunyan, Tatev (January 30, 2013). "Can Nikol Pashinyan's Civic Contract Change Anything?". Aravot Daily. Retrieved April 27, 2018.
  2. ↑
  3. ↑ "Thousands Rally Against Armenian Leader in Yerevan". April 14, 2018.
  4. ↑ "Նիկոլ Փաշինյանը հայտարարեց ժողովրդական, "ոչ բռնի, թավշյա հեղափոխության" մեկնարկը (թարմացվող)". Hetq. April 17, 2018.
  5. ↑ "Armenian PM resigns; here's what led to the surprise move". The Washington Post. April 23, 2018.
  6. ↑ Andrew, Roth (April 23, 2018). "Shock as Armenia's prime minister steps down after 11 days of protests". The Guardian.
  7. ↑ Alec, Luhn (April 23, 2018). "Armenian leader Serzh Sargsyan resigns after 11 days of protests". The Telegraph.
  8. ↑ "Armenia opposition leader demands snap election after PM resigns". Al Jazeera. April 23, 2018.
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