Failed Promises of the Government: PART 1

 On March 7, 2019, the Government of Armenia released a video in which it referred to the government’s achievements from June to December 2018.

In this video, however, a number of omissions by the provisional government during that period were missing. We will touch upon them below.

Thus, the program adopted by the Government on 1 June provisioned design and adoption of the new Electoral Code and holding extraordinary parliamentary elections in accordance with the new Legislation.

However, as we know, although the drafting of the new Electoral Code lasted for several months and was approved by the Venice Commission, the new code was rejected twice in the National Assembly, and the provisional government, headed by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who had already announced about his resignation, in fact, did not resolve one of its main objectives. As a result, Armenia went to the early parliamentary election with the old Electoral Code.

As a reminder, the new Electoral Code assumed transition to full proportional electoral system, creation of a unified database through fingerprinting or other tools, a total exclusion of double voting, lowering the transitional thresholds of political parties and alliances, etc.

The next important objective of the temporary government was the fight against corruption and bribery. For that reason, a specialized, independent anti-corruption body was supposed to be created to introduce a new system. According to this system the person, applying for a public position or a state official would be obliged to authorize an independent body to make inquiries on their behalf and to receive full information on accounts in their names at any point of the world, particularly about the cash assets, cash flows, movable and immovable property, and securities.

Although the discussions on the formation of the anti-corruption body have started in the current National Assembly, the program of the provisional government predetermined its creation, so we can say that the government has also failed here.

One of the key promises of the previous government was the provision of free information on legal entities registered in the State Registry.

This regulation would allow journalists and interested individuals to receive complete information about legal entities without spending money and see what kind of relationship a state official has with the legal entity. This is a rather serious mechanism for reducing and controlling corruption risks, which, however, remains on paper, just as all the other promises mentioned above.