The Armenian Human Rights Defender's nominee will be advanced by the Standing Parliamentary Committee on State and Legal Affairs. The relevant decision was taken at the National Assembly's sitting on Feb 2.
When presenting the draft decision, Head of the Standing Parliamentary Committee on State and Legal Affairs Hovhannes Sahakyan said on Feb 1 that the draft decision meets the constitutional amendments approved following the 6 Dec 2015 referendum. The Committee will advance one nominee and the Parliament will discuss the issue. The Committee will choose the nominee by one-third of its members' votes. All the factions will have an opportunity to nominate their own candidates and the Committee will choose only one of them.
The opposition lawmakers in the Committee on State and Legal Affairs came out against that decision, saying that the Committee mostly consists of members of the ruling Republican Party of Armenia (RPA), so it turns out that the candidate for Ombudsman will be nominated by the representatives of the pro-power force.