Today, on 12 July, the Civil Society Organizations’ Anti-Corruption Coalition of Armenia and “Bright Armenia” Political Party signed a Memorandum of Cooperation. There are several objectives: first, the parties have set the task to contribute to the reduction of administrative and political corruption; support the development of effective public administration system in Armenia; promote transparency, reporting and integrity principles, as well as to raise the level of anti-corruption perception and awareness among the public and contribute to identification of legislation which includes corruption risks and implement anti-corruption reforms.
The CSOs’ Anti-Corruption Coalition of Armenia, which was created in 2014, currently joins around 80 civil society organizations. The mission of CSOs’ Anti-Corruption Coalition is to contribute to the reduction of corruption in Armenia through introducing efficient anti-corruption institutional mechanisms, as well as carry out public control over the implementation of the Republic of Armenia Anti-Corruption Strategy and its Implementation Action Plan for 2015-2018. “Cooperation with the political parties, which have strong and well developed anti-corruption basis in their programs, cannot stay aside in fight against corruption. Notably, “Bright Armenia” is one of such parties, and we have already found edges for joint struggle against this evil,” Mr. Karen Zadoyan, Coordinator of the CSO’s Anti-Corruption Coalition Secretariat said after the official ceremony of signing the Memorandum of Cooperation.
He noted that the main target of the memorandum is to eliminate corruption in various sectors of the society. “We should be able to implement effective anti-corruption institutional mechanisms to eliminate political corruption. Another important issue is the anti-corruption education of our citizens and raising the level of anti-corruption perception among the public. We need to combine our efforts in order to have a comprehensive program of anti-corruption education in Armenia,” Mr. Zadoyan noted.
Welcoming the signing of Memorandum, Mr. Edmon Marukyan, the Chairman of “Bright Armenia” Political Party stressed that since the very first day of the foundation in 2015, the Party has targeted corruption, “We feel that the social support is very important for our initiatives. I believe that the support of the civil society organizations and our citizens may be ensured by active participation of the public sector, which in our case is the CSOs’ Anti-Corruption Coalition. As a result of professional and in-depth research the Coalition supports various initiatives. I hope that we shall use the Parliamentary platform to perform key initiatives as well,” Mr. Marukyan mentioned.
He believes the main obstacle to the development of our country is corruption. “When we are told that we have unsolved conflicts, closed borders, do not have seas and other such things, I think that the first obstacle that hinders us is the corruption that exist in Armenia, which over the years has become a systematic tool, which does not allow the economic development,” said the party leader.
Gevorg Tosunyan
