Reforms to make Armenian judiciary independent in 4 yrs-justice minister

YEREVAN, July 24. /ARKA/. Justice Minister of Armenia Hrayr Tovmasyan said the judicial system of the country will become really independent over the next four years due to the strategic program of judicial and legal reforms 2012-2016. 

Armenia’s President Serzh Sargsyan approved the program on July 17.

“When the Armenian government presented its 2012-2017 program to the parliament, some deputies accused us of filing little detailed information on some spheres. At that time the Prime Minister noted that for a number of spheres we will design separate programs. And this is our program which we started developing last year, and I don’t think anyone can say there is no details in it,” Minister Tovmasyan said presenting the program.

He also added that the Cabinet is sincere in evaluating the existing legal issues in the country.

“We still have problems, the process of building a statehood is still on. Inertia and the Soviet past didn’t let us understand clearly what kind of problems we have as well as to solve them. Very often we had to learn from our own mistakes,” Minister Tovmasyan clarified.

The existing issues in the judicial and legal systems, corruption risks make the system unpredictable raising public discontent, he said.

“We mentioned all these issues in the program. This is not a program of the government only, but of all of us. There is no individual who has never crossed the judicial system,” Tovmasyan added.

Justice Minister also informed that the estimated cost will be millions of dollars, “but we will do everything possible to avoid borrowing credits, we will try to implement the program through our own budget means or grants.”

On his side, Armenian President’s Assistant Georgy Kutoyan said the main purpose of the program is to ensure independence of the judicial system, and elimination of corruption. 

“In contrast to the previous programs, most of the components of this document aim for anticorruption measures. The program creates favorable chances for corruption elimination in judicial- legal sphere,” Kutoyan added.—0-