“On 8 April, at 12:01 a.m., the website of the 168 Zham newspaper published an article entitled” The Public Council will become a structure subordinate to the Prime Minister and will be funded” and an article full of facts unrelated to reality, authored by journalist Gohar Savzyan.

It refers to the technical amendments to the RA Law on the Public Council, by which the government tries to bring Article 11, Part 1 of the “Law on the Public Council” in line with the “Law on the Regulation of Administrative Legal Relations”, thus making the status of “office” for the staff of the Public Council defined by the Law on the Public Council or renaming it to “Secretariat”.

I would like to inform the public that the staff of the Public Council with its employees, the “Secretariat” or the “Office” (as we call it) before, until 2018, the entry into force of all the provisions of the new Constitution was de jure a subdivision of the Office of the President of the Republic of Armenia, and after that a subdivision of the Office of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia. The staff of the Public Council, the Secretariat, performs the tasks and directions assigned by the Chairman of the Public Council, organizes functions related to the normal activities of the Public Council commissions and the structure.

Before making such a mistake, the professional journalist could have requested and received passports of positions from all the staff members of the Public Council and would have been convinced that none of them has any legal or practical connection with the head of any structural subdivision of the RA Prime Minister’s Office, does not deal with them and is absolutely subordinate to the leadership of the Public Council. However, the journalist did not do so for reasons known only to her, for which we are sorry.

Moreover, not understanding the meaning of the legislative change, which presupposes technical agreement, she concluded that “when we study the justifications of this draft, it becomes clear that the changes are made to finance the Public Council, as it is not funded in this status.” This is a forgery, even the author of the legislative initiative, the RA Government stated in the justification that the goal is to eliminate the contradictions between the two normative acts

The newspaper and its journalist could have appealed to former and current employees of the Secretariat of the Public Council to inquire from them and be informed that they, unlike the chairman and members of the Public Council, have always been paid as regular working experts, instead of providing the public with such incompetent information that “it is not funded in such status.”

The newspaper and its journalist did not even try to contact the chairman of the Public Council through Lusine Manukyan, the public relations and media officer of the Public Council, to find out such basic things in order to avoid such distortions that do not bring honor to the multifaceted media.

Moreover, on the basis of absolute ignorance and falsification, they have made such conclusions that “the Public Council will thus become a structure subject to the Prime Minister, with all the consequences arising from it,” which is just ridiculous. After all, the Public Council is not formally the secretariat of the Prime Minister’s Office, but its 45 members and hundreds of members of the commissions, who work and function on public basis, and who are not subject to the staff of the Government of the Republic of Armenia. Here again, the journalist simply shone with ignorance of the structure and functions of the Public Council.

The Public Council, in accordance with Article 161 of the RA Constitution 1 Article 1 of the RA Law on the Public Council, is an advisory body of the Government. The advisory bodies are not subordinate to the government or to the opposition, but to them, and their objective is to provide them with advice on documents of strategic importance and public issues.

We hereby request to apologize to readers and the public and to post this denial on 168.am website.

I would like to take this opportunity to urge the Armenian government not to hurry in the issue of adoption of this change of technical nature, as the Public Council will soon submit to the Government a proposal for more extensive and substantive changes based on the Public Council’s Institutional Operations and Development Strategy. Unfortunately, the adoption of this basic document and the 2020 Action Plan of the Public Council was postponed due to the state of emergency declared in the country in connection with the new coronavirus epidemic, and I hope that after that it will be quickly formulated and presented to the Armenian government.

Styopa Safaryan

Chairman of the Public Council,” the statement reads.