Qualified to Serve?: President’s new chief of staff faces criticism over lack of military service

Armen Gevorgyan, 33, was named the head of the presidential staff last month after the surprise resignation of Artashes Tumanyan to pursue a political career. Gevorgyan has worked as an aide to Kocharyan since the latter’s appointment as Prime Minister of Armenia in 1997.

Armen Gevorgyan, 33, was named the head of the presidential staff last month after the surprise resignation of Artashes Tumanyan to pursue a political career. Gevorgyan has worked as an aide to Kocharyan since the latter’s appointment as Prime Minister of Armenia in 1997.

But Armenia’s law on military service states that men liable for call-up who did not serve in the army cannot be appointed to state posts. Gevorgyan did not serve in the army and consequently his appointment is illegal, according to Ruben Torosyan, Chairman of the Supreme Council Deputies Club, a public organization representing former deputies.

Presidential press secretary Viktor Soghomonyan says that Gevorgyan received a deferment from military service to enable him to continue his studies (he is a candidate in pedagogical sciences). Soghomonyan did not serve in the army for the same reason, saying: “I am not to blame for not having served in the army. I studied postgraduate courses and defended my candidate’s thesis.”

Those enrolled in postgraduate study are deferred and in case of defending a thesis they are relieved of military service by state order. Soghomonyan admits that the law on military obligation needs discussion.

Torosyan says Gevorgyan is far from alone in missing his army service. He has established that Prime Minister Andranik Margaryan, Prosecutor General Aghvan Hovsepyan, Yerevan mayor Yervand Zakharyan, and 10 government ministers, including Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian, Justice Minister David Harutyunyan, and Minister of Agriculture David Lokyan, also did not serve in the army.

Although some of these men would be too old to have done their military service in Armenia’s army, the army of the independent republic is the legal successor of the Soviet military. Reservists and men liable for conscription to the Soviet army automatically became reservists and conscripts of the army of independent Armenia. Service in the Soviet army is regarded as military service for the purposes of Armenia’s law.

In all, about 60 percent of state officials have not performed military service. Citing data on the official website of the government (www.gov.am), Torosyan has twice alleged that Defense Minister Serzh Sargsyan has not served in the army either.

From 1989 to 1993, Serzh Sargsyan was head of the self-defense forces committee of Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. However, his participation in the war is not regarded formally as military service and Sargsyan himself does not say claim that it was. Recently, the following sentence was added to his biography: “In 1972-1974, served in the USSR Armed Forces.”

Torosyan is unconvinced. He says: “Service in the army is not a thing about which you would normally make a mistake in your biography. I declared two years ago that Serzh Sargsyan had not served in the army. He called me and invited me to a conversation. He told me that he had served in the army for three years (now it turns out that it was two years).

“He said that I was absolutely right and that he would tell the President that a change in the law was needed, however, nothing was done. Every time I find a contradiction in Sargsyan’s biography, after which they correct it. I have done it so often that I have “turned” Sargsyan’s biography into a perfect one.”

On several occasions, Torosyan has approached the courts for a declaration that some of the decrees concerning appointments issued by the President are invalid. However, the courts have refused to hear the case, ruling that it should be a matter for the Constitutional Court to rule on the constitutionality of the decrees.

“The strange thing is that I am not questioning the constitutionality of Presidential decrees, but contending that a certain law has been violated by one decree or another,” Torosyan says.

Torosyan’s initiative has been welcomed and his claims supported in a letter from the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces Mikael Harutyunyan.

After graduating from the Yerevan Polytechnic Institute, Torosyan himself served in the Soviet Army for two years. He was a deputy of the first National Assembly (then called the Supreme Council) of independent Armenia.

Until 1982, under Soviet law, students in faculties with military chairs in a number of institutions of higher education, including the Polytechnic Institute, received the rank of lieutenant and were not required to do compulsory military service. Consequently, numerous officials who graduated from such institutions did not serve in the army, but became reservists.

After 1982, conscripts were required to enter the military at 18, regardless of where they studied. They continued their education upon completion of their two-year service.

Some ministers, in response to Torosyan’s statements, presented courses at military chairs as evidence of their service in the army. The Premier’s press secretary said that he had not even passed those courses. Oskanian’s press secretary said that the Foreign Minister had not served in the army because he only became an Armenian citizen in 1998.

The law on military obligation for state officials was adopted in 1998. It requires the government to produce a list of state positions, both political and civil service, to whom the law applies, but no such list has ever been produced.

Torosyan received an explanation of this in 2002 from the Government. It stated: “The envisaged list was not confirmed by the RA Government because of the contradictions between this article of the law and a number of other articles.”