Artur Sakunts, Chairman of Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly Vanadzor Office, in the interview with Iravaban.net, said that Commission on Ethics of High-Ranking Officials was involved in protectionism and sponsorship activities.
He also noted that there were cases when their organization rose problems, yet the commission did not even make any efforts to influence or make efforts to trouble the high ranking official who had violated the norms of ethics.
“They were very decent when receiving reports about violation, they were modest in their assessments; moreover, they did not even try to trouble the high-ranking officials who had violated the norms of ethics. They tried to soften, and even by obvious and explicitly funny formulations tried to relieve them from responsibility, that is they tried to justify their obviously inadequate behavior even at that level,” Mr. Sakunts said.
Notably, the new draft law “On Prevention of Corruption and Ethics Commission” was developed, and was presented for public discussion on e-draft website in the period of 3-18 February. Mr. Sakunts was not aware of this as well as the issue that the committee would have the same composition as the Commission on Ethics of High-Ranking Officials and it would be appointed by the president, he said that such institute would not be effective.
High-ranking officials who are stuck in corruption, show their cynical and contemptuous attitude toward the community. In this aspect it is senseless to expect will or real contextual struggle against corruption from such people, or display adequate behavior of high-ranking officials, because they are not considered to be that standard or behavior bearers, who can be a model of the responsible representative of the authorities in a democratic state.
Thus, providing authorities to such people and conducting fight against corruption by such people is mockery. I am still not speaking about the introduction of integrity rules and corresponding mechanisms, because they are just the ones that should be called to responsibility for all these corruption processes and contemptuous attitude towards the Republic of Armenia and its citizens,’ Mr. Sakunts concluded.
