The Public should decide: Specialist

The Commission on Ethics of High-Ranking Officials failed to exercise its authorities and effective fight against corruption. Armen Galstyan, Executive Director of the International Center for Human Development said that since its creation the Commission had done nothing. “When this body was created, several people were working, there was a fairly wide circle who presented declarations, that collection of information was an end in itself: it should be analyzed, compared and comparison and opinion should be provided refereeing whether anything was changed or not. However such steps were not performed, there was no such authority, it was not clear what effect the body has had in fighting against corruption,” our interlocutor said.

Being aware of the draft law “On Prevention of Corruption and Ethics Commission” which proposes to increase the authorities of the body, Mr. Galstyan said that significant changes should be expected. “I hope that this new form of authority shall achieve some result, but I think a new motion should be made, because, if you perform a step then it is more difficult to abandon this step than to implement a new initiative.”

According to this new draft law, the committee will have the same composition as the Commission on Ethics of High-Ranking Officials and it will be appointed by the president. To the question of whether this body may be considered to be independent and effective, the expert answered, “Nothing may be considered independent in our country and operate effectively, because the “independence” has become modified concept in our country. What does independent mean? At this moment independence is not the most critical issue. It is rather the tool set of the body, its possibilities and the desire to change something.”

According to Mr. Galstyan, the society should show initiative and make decisions. “The most important thing is that there should be a perception, it is not necessarily only the authorities, and responsible persons of the sector and those who exercise control have it. This perception should be among the public and every individual. And we can perform definite steps in the scope of this perception, which may lead to definite changes. This means that we should change ourselves and then only be able to assess whether these actions will be effective or not. The answer to this is the awareness of the citizen. The citizen, as the power holder, should decide whether it is convenient to live in the scope social relations. This is a really complicated issue. We know that we make decisions at each step. Every time we go on our opinion though the “easy” way. During that time, we deal with problems, which maybe are not occurrences of classic corruption, but this is where the main problem begins. I believe that the public should decide,” he said.

Iravaban.net

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