A few days ago, a meeting of the council on struggle against corruption took place in the government presided by Tigran Sargsyan, the Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia. Eduard Sharmazanov, a Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly, Aghvan Hovsepyan, the Attorney General of the Republic of Armenia, Vladimir Gasparyan, the Chief of Police, Hrayr Tovmasyan, the Minister of Justice of the Republic of Armenia, Hovhannes Hovsepyan, the head of the President’s control service, representatives of the Heritage Party, the Rule of Law Party (RLP), the ARF, as well as a set of NGOs and international organizations, participated in the meeting.
Armen Martirosyan, the deputy leader of the Heritage Party, stated that only representatives of the opposition and civil society would be included in the new body they proposed as a counterbalance to the government. www.aravot.am inquired of Mr. Martirosyan in this regard whether it could be a real counterbalance, taking into account the opposition’s steps. He replied, “Since the subject matter is institutional steps to be taken in the long-term, in that case, it won’t be essential who represents the opposition. It is also interested in showing its work. This form is common around the world that offers an opportunity also to the opposition to heal the system of government having respective competencies. If the process is about persons or names, we will make mistakes all the time.” We inquired whether there had been clear inclination of the government during the meeting to solve the problem of corruption, Mr. Martirosyan said, “The time of inclinations is over, now it is the time to take practical steps.”
We talked also with Artsvik Minasyan, an ARF MP. Since he stated that the ARF had accepted the proposal of the government to jointly struggle, we inquired what the council meeting had shown, whether they noticed that the government had a serious intention to solve the problem of corruption or not. Mr. Minasyan stated, “One shouldn’t overuse the word ‘cooperation.’ We said that we were ready to put forward our proposals, since the proposed ones were the most important ones in our program. The ARF made a proposal to establish an independent anticorruption agency long ago. That is why we participated in the council meeting out of politeness. We put forward our proposals and it will be seen very quickly whether the ruling party is honest when it makes its statements. If it really wants to take action to struggle against corruption, it must accept our proposals too.”
In response to a question what they meant by saying “out of politeness,” Mr. Minasyan said, “We mean that at this moment, we are not convinced that they want to impartially struggle, but we don’t have sufficient grounds to claim otherwise either. Time will tell. However, it is praiseworthy that the government accepts that the struggle against corruption has been inefficient. This is a confession; they just have to draw conclusions from this.”
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Tatev HARUTYUNYAN
