MANVEL BADALIAN: CIVIL SERVICE COUNCIL WILL NOT BE ABLE TO KEEP ATTESTATION PROCESS AWAY FROM CORRUPTION RISKS WITHOUT NGOs AND MEDIA

Noyan Tapan
April 23, 2008

YEREVAN, APRIL 23, NOYAN TAPAN. A seminar-discussion dedicated to the
strategy of stability of anti-corruption monitoring network was held
on April 22 in Yerevan on the initiative of the Eurasia Cooperation
Foundation.

During over one year and a half the monitoring team consisting of seven
NGOs implemented an all-embracing program aimed at reducing corruption
risks in the civil service sphere, through monitorings of contest and
attestation processes of civil servants. At the program’s new stage,
besides contests held in the Civil Service Council, monitorings of
contest processes in the RA Ministries of Education of Science, Health,
Labor and Social Issues were also held. A cooperation memorandum was
signed between the RA Civil Service Council and monitoring network
of NGOs within the framework of the program.

Vache Kalashian, the Chairman of one of the organizations included
in the monitoring network of program’s implementation, the Union
of Armenian State Servants, said that the program’s main goal was
to ensure mutual contact between the public and the state through
contest attestation processes monitoring, because, if we have that
mutual contact, "we will have an efficient state, a legitimate
machinery of state." At the initial stage five NGOs, the Union of
Armenian State Servants, the Association of Armenian Young Lawyers,
the Helsinki Committee of Armenia, the Civil Initiative of Reliable
Information, took part in the monitoring, the Armenian branch of
Transparency International also presented the program to its delegates,
at present the number of organizations having joined the network has
reached seven.

In the first part of program’s implementation the grant was given
by the Eurasia Foundation and Yerevan Office of OSCE, at present the
program’s implementation continues with the financing of the Eurasia
Foundation. There is willingness to implement such a program in other
spheres, as well, in particular, on court and judicial reforms.

"I attach much importance to state-society contact and the situation,
in which we sometimes find ourselves, public intolerance, distrust,
lack of confidence, distrustfulness, to some extent are the consequence
of these phenomena," Manvel Badalian, the Chairman of the RA Civil
Service Council, said in his turn. According to him, without NGOs
and media the Civil Service Council will not be able to control the
attestation process by keeping it away from corruption risks.