A LITTLE PREGNANT COURT
Naira Hayrumyan
Story from Lragir.am News:
Published: 15:30:54 – 13/06/2012
The Public Television of Armenia, commenting on one-day strike of 500
lawyers, focused on the sharp reaction of the judicial bodies. Note
that the judges said the strike was an order and an attempt of
blackmail. The Public TV criticized such an approach.
The judicial system which has always depended on the government,
especially when it was necessary to legitimize the elections, has
evidently become a burden for the authorities, at least because all
recent international reports have focused on the lack of justice and
necessity to ensure independence of the judicial system.
Back in January, the minister of justice Hrair Tovmasyan said that the
lack of confidence in the judicial system is 70-80% and the reforms
plan to reduce this figure up to 30-40%.
This sounds as absolute nonsense. What does it mean to reduce lack
of confidence up to 30%? In the case of the judicial system, it is
supposed to have absolute confidence between both side. Trust in the
judicial system either exists or does not. This is the task to follow,
not reduction of the low level of confidence.
Such a populist attitude to the judicial system allows it to approach
similarly to another institute which also supposes full confidence.
Elections are meaningless unless people are not sure that their votes
are equal. There is no election without trust.
The current judicial system fined civic activists who wanted to
dismantle the illegal constructions in Mashtots Park. It also rejected
the claims of the Armenian National Congress and a number of candidates
who demanded to void elections. The Constitutional Court did not say
there were no violations. It merely stated that there were no grounds
to void the election.
What grounds does the court need to void the elections? In normal
countries, it would take only 2-3 cases of fraud to declare lack
of confidence to the organizers of the elections since trust is the
cornerstone of elections. And in Armenia, trust is considered as a
secondary moral category which has nothing to do with the government
institutes.
In the meantime, we live and build relations with other people and
institutions based on trust. No one checks every hour whether we
violate the law, whether we fulfill our task because we trust each
other. In relation to this, we need absolute trust in the court
and elections.
Meanwhile, the two key institutions are the most controversial
institutions in the public system. We cannot trust each other unless we
believe that we will judge justly. This is similar to pseudo-belief in
God when a person commits a sin, knowing that he will buy indulgences
from the pries.
The fact that Public Television “attacked” the court may give reason to
hope that Armenia understands the need to break the current judicial
system and build a new one. Let this be after the election, because
the new court cannot reject the claims of the opposition. But the
most important thing is that it happens. Perhaps this requires not
only the lawyers’ strike but sabotage by civil courts.