Anti-corruption panel 'has symbolic role' as oversight body, says lawyer

The parliament panel dealing with anti-corruption affairs has a symbolic role by virtue of being a collegial body prioritizing the proportion of votes in the decision-making, a former chairperson of the Commission on Ethics of High-Ranking Officials said Wednesday.

Sirnanuysh Sahakyan, currently acting as a co-founder of the Yerevan-based NGO Path of Law, highlighted accentuated political nature of the comission, which recentlly elected Haykuhi Harutyunyan (of the opposition Bright Armenia faction) as its chairwoman.

"The election and nomination of members for this commission - tasked with corruption prevention affairs - bears strictly a political nature. And members of the ruling political force too, raised the issue recently, insisting on the political consensus underlying this process. So my concern deals with the fact that the corruption prevention commission is institutionally formed through a political consensus. If there is a political consensus, personalities do not matter at all, because regardless of the chairperson. the members elected through a consensus represent the political forces, and so the decisions too, will be adopted through the [political] force having a dominant presence," she said in an interview with Tert.am.

Agreeing that the National Assembly was granted the dominant role in the election of the comission members, Sahakyan noted that it did not name a "united candidate" ahead of the parliament voting. "We are again reaffirming the fact that those candidates [nominated by the parliament factions] appeared on the arena through political arrangements and bargaining," she added.

The lawyer also questioned the credibility of the election of Supreme Judicial Council members, insisting on the non-transparency of the process.