Infocom.am interviewed Ms Susanne Soghomonyan, an Anti-Corruption Expert/Lawyer at the Armenian Lawyers’ Association, talked about the Draft Law “On Making Amendments and Addenda to the Law on Corruption Prevention Commission“.
– Ms Soghomonyan, recently Ararat Mirzoyan presented the Draft Law “On Making Amendments and Addenda to the Law on Corruption Prevention Commission”, which was adopted by the National Assembly in the first reading. What does this Draft lead to? What can be expected from these changes?
– First of all, I would like to mention that the draft was not publicly discussed and even not subjected to anti-corruption expertise. Nor were expert discussions organized with specialized civil society organizations who are the leaders and initiators of anti-corruption reforms. The Armenian Lawyers’ Association and the CSO Anti-Corruption Coalition Armenia learned about the existence of this draft just a day before the first reading in the National Assembly.
The process was organized in a non-conscientious manner: without ensuring at least the principles of transparency and accountability that are part of integrity. According to the information presented on the NA website, the NA Speaker was the author of the Draft, but one of the pro-government MPs mentioned in one of his speeches that a working group had worked on the draft, where the decisions were made by a consensus.
Naturally, this contradictory information already provides sufficient grounds for qualifying the process to be non-transparent and, in some cases, to be classified as “developed in latent way”. It will be objective to present to the public the actual authors and members of the working group. I also do not exclude that in case of providing real information to the public, it will become clear that this draft has been developed by the government-affiliated NGOs and their pro-government partners, with the objective of moving their agenda forward.
– However, what do you think about the proposed changes and additions to the draft?
– Taking into consideration the legal regulations defined in that draft, I can say that this is a non-justified, subjective and contradicting to international anti-corruption principles document. The draft will abolish the Competition Board consisting of the representatives of the Constitutional Court, the Human Rights Defender, the Chamber of Advocates, the Public Council and the representatives of the opposition factions of the NA. Whereas, the Competition Board is called to ensure the apolitical, impartial and fair process of the members of Corruption Preventive Commission derived from the well known Jakarta Principles.
According to the Draft the Competition Board will be abolished without any substantial arguments, and the election of the members of the commission will, in fact, be conducted with a highly politicized process. Specifically, 3 out of 5 candidates are nominated by the ruling power, one of which is nominated by the Government; in addition the Government appoints the Chairperson and the other 2 are appointed by the ruling faction of the National Assembly. In case the oppositional factions of the National Assembly fail to nominate the 4th candidate, this member will also be nominated by the ruling power in the person of the ruling faction of the National Assembly.
The last, 5th candidate is nominated by the SJC. Simply saying, in this case where the opposition factions “Bright Armenia” and “Prosperous Armenia” do not have the consent to nominate a single candidate, all three candidates from the NA are nominated by the “My Step” faction, which is the ruling faction of the NA.
If we add to this 1 candidate nominated by the Government, then 4 out of the 5 members are assigned by the ruling power. As for the candidate nominated by the SJC, I also have concerns about the fact that the 5th candidate is likely to be nominated by the ruling power as well, as the recent developments have shown that the two candidates for the SJC have been nominated exclusively by the “My Steps” and it has not been discussed with opposition factions.
What will be your steps related to the Draft?
First of all, it should be noted that on the same day, when the Draft was being discussed in the National Assembly of Armenia, the CSO Anti-Corruption Coalition of Armenia issued a statement expressing its negative attitude to the Draft Law and urging the NA President to recall the Draft.
At the same time, in case of rejecting proposal on withdrawing the Draft, we urged the NA President to present the Draft expertise results, the justification with all the components prescribed by law; to urgently initiate parliamentary hearings to discuss the Draft Law with all the actors in the field; to form an NA-CSO-Government working group for the development of drafts of legal acts aimed at the introduction of the Armenian model of the anti-corruption agency.
In parallel, we presented the situation to various international organizations supporting the implementation of the fight against corruption in Armenia, as well as the heads of all factions of the National Assembly and the other political forces participating in the 7th convocation, and asked them to urge within their mandate and tools to recall the controversial draft .
It should be noted that we have responds from some reputable international organizations and we are currently in the stage of discussion.
It should be added that in cooperation with the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Armenia we organize public discussions on the Draft Anti-Corruption Strategy of the Republic of Armenia and its Implementation Action Plan for 2019-2022 in the RA regions. Within the scope of these discussions the option of the Armenian model of the Anti-Corruption Body corresponding to Armenia’s context and reality, will be discussed as well. We will inform the relevant authorities and the public about the results of all these processes.