Another brawl occurred at the plenary session of the National Assembly of Armenia

ArmInfo. Another brawl broke out at the plenary session of the National Assembly of Armenia.

It began between MPs from the ruling Civil Contract faction and the opposition political force Strong Armenia. The brawl was preceded by a verbal altercation between the members of parliament, which then led to the use of fists. Parliament Speaker Ruben Rubinyan was forced to call a recess.

The clashes were triggered by the agenda item "On determining the size of the parliamentary investigative committee to investigate the problems of the failure to fulfill the exclusive mission of the Armenian Apostolic Holy Church in the spiritual life of the Armenian people, the development of its national culture, and the preservation of national identity as a result of the crisis in the Church following the activities of several AAC clergy."

Temperatures escalated after Speaker Ruben Rubinyan interrupted Edgar Ghazaryan, a member of the Strong Armenia opposition faction, who accused the speaker of embezzlement of public funds. Rubinyan declared Ghazaryan's speech beyond the scope of the agenda and cut him off from finishing. After this, Civil Contract MP Vahe Ghalumyan rose from his seat and went to sort things out. He repeatedly pushed Strong Armenia MP Vaghinak Vartanov, leading to a scuffle that escalated into a physical altercation. The showdown then continued, this time in the form of a verbal altercation in the hallway of the National Assembly.

As a reminder, the opposition considers the issue of the Armenian Apostolic Church unconstitutional, since the Church, by its constitutional status, is an autonomous structure.

It is worth noting that 18 MPs signed up to speak on the National Assembly meeting agenda alone.