“Other,” – the RA Minsister of Justice Hovhannes Manukyan did not have any other reply to the question of Iravaban.net’s journalist.
After today’s Government session the Minister came out of the building where some demonstrators applied to him with requests. After a talk with them the Mr. Manukyan found that the questions did not refer to his sphere.
The reporter of Iravaban.net asked the Minister how he would evaluate the fact that no NGO had submitted applications for participation in the competition for the Anti-Corruption Council. Mr. Manukyan replied, “I have other information.”
To our question “How many NGOs have submitted applications?” according to the Minister’s information, Mr. Manukyan did not answer and simply said, “Other”.
To remind you, recently, Iravaban.net was applying to the body accepting the applications, to the Staff of the RA Government, for information about the competition process. The deadline for applications was yesterday – the 13 May. Yesterday, at 18:06 we made a phone call to Ms Marine Tovmasyan, the responsible person of the Staff of the RA Government for applications and checked whether there were applications. She answered that no applications had been submitted to the RA Government (all audio records are available).
Today, the telephone (010) 51-59-74 of the responsible person for applications did not answer the calls.
It is worth mentioning, the anti-corruption coalition uniting more than 70 NGOs has refused to participate in the competition for participation in this council, as well as the Public Network for cooperation with State Authorities consisting of 150 NGOs which made a statement, The Coalition of Armenian NGOs with Special Consultative Status in the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and the anti-corruption NGO “Transparency International” “(TI), which has participated in the elaboration of the anti-corruption strategy concept prefer to stay in the status of an observer.
