In your opinion, what is the most efficient measure against corruption in Armenia?

In our opinion, development of democracy will be the measure to provide a more stable and sustainable result for Armenia. That is, if democratic mechanisms - principles of rule of law, transparency and accountability are developed, there will be a chance to reduce corruption and attain long-term results. We are convinced that there should be punishment, i.e. people involved in corruption have to realize that they are committing a crime and will be punished. However, today many people in Armenia are in some way involved in corruption. Punishment is a method, but we are not sure that it is the best method for Armenia since in that case the majority of the population will have to be punished since they are in some way involved in activities that are illegal.     

The high-ranking officials who patronize corruption, who have the levers that allow enrichment at the expense of public means and public property, have to be punished and called to account.

Mechanisms of democracy have to be developed - transparent governing, participation of the society in the decision-making process, freedom of speech, freedom of media, there should be independence and independent courts. Developing these institutes will reduce the corruption.

Transparency International was more known as an organization fighting against corruption but recently you are active also in other fields - environment, human rights in the army; what has been the reason for such expansion of activities? 

After March 2008, we reviewed our charter and included in it also protection of human rights realizing that if you want democratic reforms you can't stand aside from protection of human rights, in particular, civil rights.

We are involved in human right protection so far as it concerns civil rights - freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, freedom of unions, the right to take part in elections and fields connected with corruption.

We help people to eliminate the violations of their rights that occurred due to corruption.   

Murders of soldiers and impunity of those responsible for it have raised a wave of protest. In your opinion, what should our Government as well as the civil society do to prevent such cases?

Problems in the army have different reasons and we believe that one of them is corruption, protectionism, when some high-ranking officials, commanders simply do not bear responsibility for their activities. As a rule, many of them are generals that have passed through the war in Karabakh, who have gained such a position in the society that they are permitted everything, and everything is forgiven. They have defended the motherland, but then they started to enrich at the expense of the same motherland. It is unacceptable, and I believe that their contribution in the war cannot be the basis for forgiving them. Such officials have to be dismissed from their positions, and it will improve the atmosphere in the army to a certain extent.

Certainly, there are different problems with human rights in the army at different levels. There should by all means be preventive measures for the relations within service regulations to be organized in the right way. Today young men go to the army unaware of their rights; they might know very well their duties, but they don't know that they also have rights. There has to be appropriate informing, legislative preventive measures, punishment for committed acts most of which today are qualified as suicides; all these cases have to be considered properly, and the guilty have to be detected. Today we do not see political will for that. By qualifying such cases as suicides they put the whole responsibility on the deceased and his family because the parents start to suffer why their son should have committed a suicide. There should be punishment, and any commander who has such cases in his military unit should bear the responsibility. Even if it is suicide, he should have noticed what was going on among the soldiers who were put under his responsibility, who were trusted to him. If it was a murder, the guilty have to be detected all the more so, and the commanders have to bear the responsibility and not be moved to some other military unit or get promoted.

This sort of situation in the army raises corruption risks since parents start to think how to "save" their children from the army by any means, or get a "better place" for them like avoid placement in Karabakh since most such cases occur there.              

Recently NGOs and civil initiative groups have become more active and respond faster to processes taking place in Armenia. Would you say that we have an established civil society?

Of course, we cannot call it a completely established one; but it is a process and it goes on and develops, and I have to say that our Government "supports" this process by making everyone angry day-by-day with its inadequate posture and illegal decisions. People are simply forced to fight every day for different things - it is the opening of foreign language schools, cutting allowances for the pregnant, environmental problems, attitude towards murders in the army etc. That is, the Government does not accomplish a policy favored by the people; the decisions made are driven by narrow group interests and not by public ones. Such a posture simply angers the society and its active groups realize that to reach anything today they can only by fighting for it.

On the one hand, it is of course good that citizens have become more active, that their consciousness has advanced but it is not a normal process for a democratic country, there should not be scandalous decisions. I regret very much that people waste their energy in fighting instead of doing something constructive; they fight against illegal decisions and sometimes in vain. Though I am convinced that our fight always has some positive result, it is not useless and is always a step forward. However, that energy and those resources could have been used more efficiently - to develop a new policy, new programs, which would have been much more useful. Whereas in current situation, one spoils everything and others try to fix it. 

To what extent does the civil society manage to influence decision-making?    

It does manage but to a small extent and mainly by fighting for it. We basically try to fix the situation and no time and resources are left for developing more constructive proposals. In any case, I cannot say that our struggle is inefficient, but I can't say that we had victories either since it would be too much to call our small successes victories. The activity of civil society is a positively developing process that will bring to a change at some moment: all the energy of the people and their contribution cannot disappear without a trace.

What is our civil society lacking today?

As for NGOs, they don't have enough resources, in some cases they lack professionalism maybe due to insufficient resources. The work of civil groups is more efficient maybe because they are pushed forward by their enthusiasm and not some concrete project, goal, donor or accountability considerations... Coalitions too are quite active and efficient but not the ones created for long-term cooperation, but the ones created spontaneously, to solve a concrete problem.

I think in the meantime people have learned to work with each other, have become more tolerant. Our problem, I believe, are the imitations of civil society that are established mainly by the authorities trying to show that there is public participation, involving organizations accomplishing their orders.

This process is definitely very dangerous, it is artificial and in some sense also immoral. Such organizations are quite numerous; as a rule they do not show-up but their activities are quite harmful. Some people establish organizations and I don't know if it is servility or low civil consciousness but they feel they have to serve the authorities. It is not a non-government organization any more. It casts a shadow on other - independent NGOs and causes a gap and polarization in civil society. It hampers the process since, I believe, such organizations could have cooperated but due to contradiction in their views and approaches such cooperation becomes impossible.          

Interview by Mary Alexanyan
Source - www.hra.am