Nikol Pashyanyan: Systemic corruption eradicated in Armenia

ArmInfo. In recent years, Armenia has made tremendous progress in fighting corruption or the perception of corruption, said Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, delivering a speech at the Netherlands Institute of International Relations, Clingendael,  in The Hague.

Nevertheless, the prime minister believes that corruption is still  present in the country and the government is consistently fighting  it. In this regard, he stressed that, despite the post-war crisis,  tremendous progress has been made in the field of freedom of speech  and the press media "According to the latest published indexes (of  freedom of speech - ed. note), Armenia ranks 51st in the world and  the government intends to continue to carry out democratic reforms in  the country.

Nikol Pashinyan emphasized that such pages as, for example, public  distrust in relation to the election results or the practice of  falsifying them, have been closed in Armenia. "I can say with  confidence that Armenia has no way back, because the source of these  reforms is not the government, but the people, the citizens of the  Republic of Armenia, who clearly, firmly consider it their duty to  maintain democracy, the rule of law. Of course, we all understand  that we still have a long way to go in terms of institutional  development", the prime minister stressed.

At the same time, he noted with regret that he could not provide  great results in the field of an independent judiciary. "All I can  say is that this is one of the most important issues facing Armenia  today. And the biggest problem is that there are no proven formulas  in international practice. We see that even in many European  countries, the same processes are taking place: when there is a  struggle, it is difficult to distinguish who is right and who is  wrong for an independent judiciary. "Therefore, we prefer not to harm  in this regard, because we are talking about guarantees of rights and  freedoms," Pashinyan said.

Presenting the reforms in the penitentiary system as quite  successful, he noted that today the Republic of Armenia ranks second  after Monaco in Europe in terms of the number of prisoners and is  among the least loaded countries. "Recently, in response to criticism  of our opposition, I declare that countries that deviate from the  democratic path follow the path of repression. In these countries,  prisons usually open, not close, and in our country, during this  period of our rule, the two largest prisons were closed", the Prime  Minister said.

Once again, touching on the topic of the fight against corruption,  Pashinyan stated with "regret, sadness and a sense of  dissatisfaction" that now not only former officials, but also  officials and members of the government appointed by him are accused  of corruption.