On 2 November, the Ministry of Justice organized a discussion entitled “Course of Judiciary Reform in Post-Revolution and Post-Election Armenia” with the support of the Open Society Foundations-Armenia within the framework of the program “Partnership for Open Society Initiative”.
The Ministry of Justice reported that the discussion was held “with the participation of more than 50 stakeholders.”
In the conversation with Iravaban.net, Tigran Matevosyan, member of the CSO Anti-Corruption Coalition of Armenia, representative of “Armash” Village Community Support and Development Center NGO noted that they had not been invited to participate in the discussion, despite the fact that the organization is a member of the State and Legal Commission of the Public Council.
According to him, they have not received an invitation to participate in any discussions for more than a year. “I notice the direction of the NGOs they invite to the state discussions in general, naturally my opinion has already been formed that those discussions are all formal, very subjective. In my opinion, they are aimed at implementing all their projects. ”
Tigran Matevosyan said about the working style of the Ministry of Justice, “When the Minister posts a picture of a person on the wall of his office, it doesn’t matter if that person is the leader, the president, the prime minister, and says that he is inspired by looking at that picture, I will never expect any justice or anything fair from such a minister.”
According to him, the Ministry of Justice does not take any steps to protect the violated interests of the people. “I see a body that administers justice, it is the institute of the Human Rights Defender. For me, at the moment there is no Ministry of Justice in Armenia. “
Speaking about judicial reforms, Matevosyan mentioned that he has no expectations from this government.
“I bless the previous period, because we were able to implement the law at that time. When we operated the anti-corruption centers, we witnessed many illegalities and mostly managed to restore the violated rights of those people, to help people, and now when there is indifference, direct contempt, cynicism, in these conditions I do not think there will be a positive change in our country. We are now losing the state, both in legal and in moral sense,” Tigran Matevosyan concluded,
Notably, Iravaban.net has already referred to the veiled event dedicated to the judicial reforms of the Ministry of Justice and some civil society organizations that have become partners.
To recall that on 1 November, the CSO Anti-Corruption Coalition of Armenia (currently includes 71 civil society organizations) and the Armenian Lawyers Association published two joint expert studies on Integrity Checking and Responsibility of Judges under the extraordinary conditions (of transitional justice) and the Guarantees of Independence and Effective Functioning of the Court.
