According to the new anti-corruption strategy of the RA an anti-corruption council should be established and it is foreseen to include only 2 NGO representatives in its structure. According to Gevorg Hayrapetyan, the manager of legal programs of the Freedom of Information Center NGO, 2 places is very little in terms of expressing the public opinion. He said that in this case the NGOs will be forced to achieve results through public pressure.
“The Council itself has no serious powers. More importantly, the Council is able to form an efficient committee. It is anticipated that the Prime Minister is going to be the Head of the Council. In case of such Council which is basically composed of the representatives of public authorities the following problems can arise: first – the Council will not undertake any serious steps, because the majority of representatives are from the state agencies, and the NGO opinions will be neglected. In this case, the problem can be solved by keeping it in the public spotlight.
The other risk is when the Council will make accurate conclusions and the public authorities do not consider it. Thus is unlikely, because the logic is that the state authorities will accept the conclusion that was formed as a result of overwhelming majority voting of their representatives,” FOICA representative said. Meanwhile, the NGOs had provided a number of recommendations to the Ministry of Justice. Gevorg Hayrapetyan said that FOICA’s position coincides with the recommendations of the AYLA “The fundamental issues that we had drawn were removed with objectionable reasoning. That is, they say such a thing that it’s hard to argue against it. They do not deny their importance, but at the same time point out that such a resource is not currently available in Armenia. For example, at the public council meeting they said that a sum of one hundred million was needed for them to initiate creation of the independent body. It is clear that the state has no such money.
As for the other proposals iot is yet unclear whether they were accepted or not.” Gevorg Hayrapetyan also considered important the issue of introducing the criminalization of illicit enrichment in the strategy. “Currently the work came to a stage when establishment of the committee is crucial. The proposals, which were global are suspended; we have no information about those proposals which were less important,” Gevorg Hayrapetyan, who recently participated in the meeting of the NGO representatives with the Deputy Minister Suren Krmoyan, concluded.
