Public benefit completely ignored in our state, Gagik Jhangiryan says

Should any state body in Armenia have the right to go to court to defend the public benefit, Gagik Jhangiryan asked to the Armenian Minister of Justice Arpine Hovhannisyan during the hearing of the draft legislation on “Non-Governmental organizations of Armenian and related laws”. The discussion was held at Armenia’s National Assembly. “That is an extremely complex issue. Neither anyone nor me may answer that question,” was Minister Hovhannisyan’s response.

To minister’s words, the matter should be addressed in the future over the course of the full realization of NGOs’ authorities.

“I must ensure you no European state has addressed the matter at once, granting a right to defend its beneficiaries, the NGOs. The question whether a state body should take the responsibility to defend any public benefit and exercise that right is a matter of complex discussion. Would it be useful to discuss this in the sphere of Human rights defender? Overall, I do not think we should delegate this right on a state body,” Hovhannisyan said, adding at this point no final decision is made about the topic.

Gagik Jhangiryan responded that in reality public benefit is completely ignored Armenia

“All the parks have turned into cafes, green zones are destroyed, etc. The public benefit concerns every citizen. No one defends the public benefit, since no state body is tasked with that,” the parliamentarian concluded.

To note, the most vivid and recent example of the law or rather its absence was related with the demolition of the summer hall of “Moscow” cinema, which was in the list of the historic-cultural values preserved by the state. To remind, even though thousand of signatures were collected from the citizens opposing the government decision, the citizens couldn’t’ practically exercise their right and revoke the decision due to the absence of the legal mechanisms to apply to the court.
The initiative was put aside by a principled decision not according to the law but after internal arrangements.

As Panorama.am wrote earlier, the only legal mechanism to dispute the government decision was to apply to the court only through the Office of the Human Rights Defender.

It was originally intended that the state should have been the guarantor of the preservation of the historic-cultural buildings, yet the Moscow “Cinema” case and the reality revealed that was not the case.