Tuesday, Armenia May Set Up Powerful Anti-Graft Body • Naira Nalbandian Armenia -- Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian holds a cabinet meeting in Yerevan, June 27, 2019. Armenia’s Justice Ministry has proposed the creation of a new anti-corruption agency that would be empowered to prosecute state officials suspected of bribery, fraud and other corrupt practices. The ministry drafted last month an anti-graft strategy and a three-year plan of actions stemming from it and submitted them to the Armenian government for approval. The Anti-Corruption Committee would be set up as part of that document posted on a government website. Under the proposed strategy, the committee would have not only preventive but also law-enforcement powers. The Justice Ministry wants it inherit those powers from the existing Special Investigative Service (SIS), a law-enforcement agency tasked with combatting various crimes committed by state officials. More specifically, an SIS department dealing corruption and abuse of power would be incorporated into the Anti-Corruption Committee. The other SIS divisions would be merged with the Investigative Committee, another law-enforcement body. The SIS chief, Sasun Khachatrian, confirmed on Monday that his agency will be abolished if the ministry’s proposals are approved by the government. “The creation of the new anti-corruption body presupposes the dissolution of the SIS,” Khachatrian told reporters. “But it’s still a draft,” he said. “No concrete bill has been circulated yet. So we will see.” The Justice Ministry’s initial version of the anti-graft strategy was put forward late last year and strongly criticized by civic activists. One of them, Artur Sakunts, welcomed the latest draft on Tuesday, saying that it is far more specific and workable. Armenia already has an anti-corruption agency which was set up by its previous government. The Commission on Preventing Corruption is primarily charged with scrutinizing income and asset declarations submitted by senior officials and investigating possible conflicts of interest among them. It can only ask law-enforcement bodies to prosecute officials suspected of engaging in corrupt practices or making false disclosures. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian has repeatedly pledged to root out corruption in the country since he swept to power during last year’s “Velvet Revolution.” Pashinian declared in February that his administration has already “broken the spine of systemic corruption in Armenia.” He said it will now focus on putting in place “institutional” safeguards against the problem. The head of the European Union Delegation in Armenia, Piotr Switalski, said afterwards that the current authorities in Yerevan have made “serious progress” in their anti-corruption drive. He approved of their plans to “create a new, independent anti-corruption agency that will have wide-ranging powers.” Armenian, Iranian Officials Discuss Energy Projects Iran -- Iranian Energy Minister Reza Ardakanian (R) meets with Armenia's Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigorian, Tehran, July 2, 2019. Armenia’s Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigorian has met with Iran’s Energy Minister Reza Ardakanian in Tehran for talks that reportedly focused on joint energy projects planned or already implemented by the two neighboring states. Grigorian travelled to the Iranian capital to chair, together with Ardakanian, the latest session of an Armenian-Iranian intergovernmental commission on bilateral economic cooperation. The two-day session began on Monday morning, according to the official Iranian IRNA news agency. In a statement released on Tuesday, the Armenian government said the commission discussed ways of deepening bilateral ties in a range of areas, including energy, trade, transport and financial services. The statement quoted Grigorian as saying that the meeting was preceded by “productive” discussions held by Armenian-Iranian working groups. But it did not report any concrete decisions made by the commission. Another government statement said Grigorian and Ardakanian discussed at their separate talks “the state of joint projects implemented by Armenia and Iran in the sphere of energy.” It gave no details. Grigorian met with one of Ardakanian’s deputies, Homayoun Haeri, in Yerevan on Saturday. ISNA, another Iranian news agency, said the two men discussed accelerating the ongoing construction of a new Armenian-Iranian power transmission line. It was due to be completed next year or in 2021. The new line is designed to significantly increase Armenian electricity exports to Iran. The latter pays for them with natural gas supplied to Armenia. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian discussed this project with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani when he visited Tehran in February. Pashinian’s office said at the time that they also agreed to take “practical steps” towards building a major hydroelectric plant on the Armenian-Iranian border. Grigorian was also reported to stress the significance of preferential trade agreement signed by Iran and the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) last year. He said the deal could help to boost Armenian-Iranian trade. The latest Armenian-Iranian negotiations followed a further upsurge in tensions between Iran and the United States. Pashinian made clear late last year that his country will maintain its “special relationship” with the Islamic Republic despite renewed U.S. sanctions imposed on Tehran over its controversial nuclear program. Meeting with Pashinian in February, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urged Yerevan to strengthen its ties with Tehran “contrary to what the United States desires” to see. Parliament Fails To Name Majority-Backed Candidate For Judicial Body • Astghik Bedevian Armenia -- Deputies from the ruling My Step alliance attend a parliament session in Yerevan, June 28, 2019. The pro-government majority in the National Assembly has raised eyebrows after failing to install a new member of Armenia’s state judicial watchdog nominated by it. The ruling My Step alliance last week nominated Anna Margarian, a law professor at Yerevan State University, for a vacant seat in the Supreme Judicial Council. Margarian had to be backed by at least 80 members of the 132-member parliament. With My Step holding 88 parliament seats, her election seemed a forgone conclusion. However, only 66 deputies voted for Margarian in secret ballot on Monday. Nineteen others voted against her appointment to the SJC. Only one parliamentary force, the opposition Bright Armenia Party (LHK), spoke out against her candidacy before the vote. A senior LHK parliamentarian, Gevorg Gorgisian, on Tuesday accused My Step of demonstrating an “unserious attitude” towards its own nominee. Gorgisian said he believes that some pro-government lawmakers broke ranks to vote against Margarian. My Step’s parliamentary leader, Lilit Makunts, ruled out such a possibility. She said no member of the parliament majority had objected to Margarian’s appointment. However, another senior My Step lawmaker, Vahagn Hovakimian, did not exclude that some of his pro-government colleagues voted against her “for some reasons.” Armenia - Anna Margarian, a candidate for the Supreme Judicial Council, speaks in the parliament, July 1, 2019. Hovakimian suggested that Margarian would have been elected if about two dozen deputies had not been absent from Armenia on Monday due to business trips abroad. According to information available on the parliament’s website, 12 of them are from My Step. Armenian law allows My Step to again nominate Margarian for the SJC. Makunts said that later on Monday the bloc led by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian made such an offer to Margarian but that the latter was “not inclined” to accept it. Speaking to RFE/RL’s Armenian service, Margarian made clear that she does not “find it expedient” to again run for the SJC. She insisted that she was not offended by the outcome of the parliament vote. The SJC has wide-ranging constitutional powers, including the right to nominate judges appointed by the president of the republic. It can also sanction and even terminate judges. The SJC was effectively paralyzed by the resignations of five of its nine members last month just as Pashinian and his political allies continued to push for a sweeping reform of the national judiciary. Later in June, the parliament elected two new members of the watchdog nominated by My Step. Under the Armenian Judicial Code, the SJC must have 10 members. Half of them are appointed by the parliament while the other half are chosen by the country’s judges. As things stand now, the parliament can pick one more member of the body, with the remaining three seats reserved for the judges. Press Review “Zhamanak” claims that Armenia’s Constitutional Court has effectively stopped functioning after being declared illegitimate by its newest judge, Vahe Grigorian. The paper says that this has not paralyzed the national judicial system. “Haykakan Zhamanak” accuses opposition forces of “exploiting” the Nagorno-Karabakh issue in their criticism of the government. “They claim that the status of Nagorno-Karabakh’s authorities has been lowered and equated to the status of Karabakh’s Azerbaijani community, that Artsakh’s military-political leadership is pressured to cede lands [to Azerbaijan] and so on,” writes the pro-government paper. It dismisses such claims as baseless, pointing to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s repeated assurances that no peace deal with Azerbaijan can be accepted without the approval of Karabakh’s people and leadership. “As always, while rejecting the position of the current Armenian authorities, Robert Kocharian and Serzh Sarkisian do not come up with an alternative or clarify their own positions,” it says. Lragir.am says that Eduard Sharmazanov, the spokesman for Sarkisian’s Republican Party of Armenia (HHK), keeps challenging Pashinian to name “foreign agents” which the latter says operate in the Armenian political scene. “It’s a serious issue and Sharmazanov’s concerns are legitimate,” comments the pro-Western online publication. “It must be pointed out that he is the only person consistently raising that issue. Only Pashinian knows what and whom he meant.” It says that Sharmazanov should, for his part, explain why he and his HHK colleagues had voted for gas deals with Russia which “limited Armenia’s sovereignty.” (Lilit Harutiunian) Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL Copyright (c) 2019 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc. 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. www.rferl.org