On December 4, we sent a letter of inquiry to the presidential spokesman Arman Saghatelyan with the following content, “How is it that the President of the Republic of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan was speaking Armenian at the PACE, although at the international institutions he could have made a speech using other language in accordance with RA Law on Language, while at a press conference held in Armenia, RA President was speaking Russian with President Vladimir Putin, which is a violation of the RA Law on the Language, Article 3, which states: “The Armenian language shall be the language of official statements of persons representing the Republic of Armenia.
” Eight working days have passed since our inquiry, but still we did not receive a response to our concerned question. While, pursuant to RA Law on “Freedom of Information”, provision “The answer to written inquiry is given in the following deadlines” defines “If the information required by the written inquiry is not publicized, than the copy of that information is given to the applicant within 5 days after the application is filed.” Note also that the law reads as follows: If additional work is needed to provide the information required, than the information is given to the applicant within 30 days after the application is filed, about which a written notice is being provided within 5 days after the application submission, highlighting the reasons for delay and the final deadline when the information will be provided.” Aravot.am conveyed the details of the state-of-affairs to Sushan Doydoyan, Founder, and President of the Center for Freedom of Information. She said, “In all cases, they should have given you an answer within five days. As for the remaining regarding the content, I cannot comment on that. This is a violation of the procedure defined by the law on information. In this case, they were obligated to provide some kind of answer to the applicant: either a reject or any type of information.” Aravot.am tried to find out through http.//www.givemeinfo.am website what results has the presidential staff generally registered on answering the inquiries of the citizens. The picture is as follows: In case of 8 inquiries received during the last three years, “complete and timely response was given” to 50 per cent of inquiries, “silent rejections” – 13 percent, “belated complete response” – 25 percent, “groundless answer” – 13 percent.
Tatev Harutyunyan
