Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia stated in his summarizing speech on the Budget 2013 bill yesterday that they had taken into account the objections of the ARF and 1/3 of members in the Struggle Against Corruption Monitoring Committee would be from the opposition, 1/3 from NGOs showing opposition attitude, 1/3 from the government. This statement was followed by clarification of the ARF. Aghvan Vardanyan, the secretary of the ARF parliamentary group, clarified that the Prime Minister had misunderstood them. And Artsvik Minasyan, an ARF MP, had stated during a conversation with www.aravot.am, “We put forward our proposals, and it will be clear very soon whether the statements of the governing force are honest or not. If it really wants to take measures to struggle against corruption, it should accept our proposals.”
Is the level of the government’s honesty clear, or did the Prime Minister really misunderstand the ARF, or was it done on purpose? We tried to get answers to these questions from Mr. Minasyan. He replied, “There has been a misunderstanding. The Prime Minister really misunderstood what we said. We will put forward our proposal in writing in the short run and make it public, in order that we have a clear viewpoint. We are grateful for cooperation, but what the Prime Minister said was about the monitoring committee, which already exists today. However, we are talking about an independent anticorruption body. And an independent body should be free of the government’s or governing force’s influence as much as possible and enjoy the society’s trust. And as a solution, we propose to increase the role and weight of the opposition in that body. We will make public the proposal in writing and in more detail in the short run to avoid such misunderstandings.” In response to our question whether it was such a confusing issue to cause misunderstanding, A. Minasyan said, “There are many such bodies, perhaps, the misunderstanding was caused by that. As for assessing honesty, let us wait a bit more, in order that the positions on the anticorruption measures are clearer.”
Tatev HARUTYUNYAN
