The RA Ministry of Justice planes to introduce the institute of compulsory insurance from a juridical mistake for the advocates by the end of 2021, as well as to elaborate standards for compensation of losses caused by the professional mistake.
Today, Mr. Suren Krmoyan, the Deputy Justice Minister of the RA detailed that this institute aims at compensating the losses of the corresponding party in case of juridical mistake: “We protect our citizens, and business from juridical mistakes, which presumes that if they have suffered losses there must be special standards to estimate and compensate those losses”, Mr. Krmoyan mentioned . Today, he met with the reporters and presented the new reforms in the Government program related to the sphere of justice.
In reply to Iravaban.net’s reporter, the Deputy Justice Minister touched upon the preservation of the reasonable time limits in the judicial system, the transparency of the hearings and the institute of examination of individuals entering the court house.
Mr. Krmoyan said that often the breach of reasonable time limits can have objective reasons when the courts are overloaded. Recently, he had had a discussion with Minister David Harutyunyan and they adopted a principle, according to which the number of judges would not be increased mechanically because of decreasing of the time limit: “The number of the judges will be increased in case of building an effective judicial system that is when we take stock of business processes there. We shall see; when we shall repeal the writs of execution, the overloud of the courts shall decrease, and the time limit decreased. When we introduced the special mediation institute, it again decreased. We must understand, for example, if a person to fail to attend a court hearing, what should be done to avoid postponing the session, etc. When we optimize the system, please be sure that time limits will decrease”, emphasized the representative of the department and informed that they plan to introduce an electronic system.
We were also interested what steps were provided to create conditions to ensure productive work of journalists in the courts: it often happens that the rights of the journalists are infringed. They are prohibited to attend and cover the open-door sessions, or set ungrounded time limitations: “the general idea is the following: the journalists must be provided possibly wide access to the system of justice. This means that if we do not have a ban stipulated by law, in all the other cases the journalists are free,” Mr. Krmoyan ensured. According to him the department has adopted the principle of ensuring transparency in this field.
Recently, the examination of the advocates in the judicial system became a problem. Many sessions were postponed, because, according to the advocates, the examinations by the bailiffs turned into search. We were interested how to solve this problem. Mr. Krmoyan replied, “If we mean that security and safety considerations should be decreases, and security should be subordinate, this will not happen. This means that security will be ensured and at the same time the same approach should be guaranteed for participants of the judicial process. In this regard, we plan to realize the reforms in a close cooperation with the civil society.”
There is no reference to the New Code of Administrative Violations in the justice and human rights section of the new Government Program. Notably this is just the Code that until now has provisions defining the “USSR System”, “socialist property”, “socialist law”, “the USSR Legislation on administrative offenses and the legislation of the Republic of Armenia” and other such provision. This year in April the Government approved the New Draft Code and Mr. Krmoyan reasoned the absence of sections related to the Code and the administrative violations in the Government Program by this fact. The reporter also asked about the steps directed to liquidation of provisions on disproportionate punishment, specifically when the driver fails to 100 AMD fee for parking and is fined with a 50 times more sum: 5000 AMD. On the other hand, other institutions should be toughened, for example, fines for exceeding the speed limitation.
“A number of steps have been taken in relation to the drivers last year. The new Code on Administrative Procedure is already operational. No special reference has been made as it was already developed. However we are ready to consider all the circumstances within the framework of this Code, so that responsibility is appropriate to the nature of the offense. I definitely agree, that it is unacceptable to apply great responsibility if it does not issue from the nature of the offense, and we are already taking steps towards this”, the Deputy Minister said.
We also touched upon the cases of taking bribes by the judges: how the Ministry of Justice shall fight against such officials There was a question with a reference to the President’s speech: “A responsibility must inevitably function for all the cases of corruption, we plan to make clear distinction of all corruption crimes”, Mr. Krmoyan said.
Gevorg Tosunyan
Aleksander Sargsyan
