Vazgen Manukyan Refuses to Address Issue Proposed by Prime Minister

The failure to maintain political neutrality is the reason that Vazgen Manukyan, the president of the Public Council, decided not to wait for a dismissal but to resign on his own. This opinion was expressed by Stepan Safaryan, a member of the Public Council and a political analyst, during our conversation.

Being a member of the Public Council, he does not see the effectiveness of this body's activities. “I believe that the Prime Minister initially sincerely wanted the Public Council to become a functioning body because it is an advisory body, whose mission is to provide consultation to the government and highlight the public interest. However, there has not been and is not any implementation of this policy within that structure. Of course, there are workers who do very important public work, but there has been no attempt to address interesting proposals regarding public concerns or government initiatives during these months,” noted Safaryan.

He provided an example to demonstrate that Manukyan does not actually wish to work with the Government: “Let me tell you an interesting thing. When the first meeting took place with the Prime Minister, which was also prepared by the Public Council, the issue was to understand the connection between the Government and the Public Council. When the Prime Minister came and presented his vision regarding the structure, he said, ‘For example, I really want the public council to clarify the consensus existing among the public on the Artsakh issue within its powers. What does the public want, what does it not want?’ I thought that Mr. Vazgen Manukyan would perceive this as a task assigned by the government and would initiate a resolution of this issue. But to my surprise, when I asked, ‘Why don’t you do what the government has requested us to do?’ Manukyan said, ‘Yes, I will not do that.’ It was shocking for me that the president of the Public Council refused to carry out a responsibility vested in him by law. Instead, they began to find issues that different groups of the previous government opposed the current authorities—such as the Istanbul Convention, Amulsar, courts, and so on. They tried to ‘hurt’ the government with these issues. It turned out that the president of the Public Council stood against the official agenda of the government.”

When we asked whether the inefficiency of the Public Council's work was solely conditioned by Vazgen Manukyan, Safaryan answered positively. “If a person wants to make that structure work, it will work. There are countless issues where there is indeed a mechanism to bring out public opinion. It is still unclear how these more than forty people represent the public. How are we representing it? Are we conducting surveys, what are we doing? Have we just put ourselves in place of public representatives and whoever has an idea gets to speak? I haven’t seen us prepare and submit any beautiful proposals to the government regarding any issue, stating that this is how the public sees the solution. Therefore, neither the public understands the role of this body, nor do we understand it, as members of this body, and the opinion is formed that it is a useless structure. Any organization can be non-functional, and it will turn into a useless body.”

At a press conference yesterday, in response to a question of whether there was such a suggestion that the Prime Minister would propose to clarify the public's approach to the Artsakh issue, Vazgen Manukyan responded as follows: “When it is said that Artsakh is Armenia and that’s it, and I understand that this contradicts our overall policy and how it will be perceived worldwide, I write an article in which I detail how it really should be done. I believe that this fits into the work of the Public Council.” Continuing to justify his behavior, Manukyan added that implementing the Prime Minister's proposal would mean starting discussions on the Artsakh issue from scratch. Manukyan stated that in a more restricted setting during a meeting with the Prime Minister, he told that the people had already answered that question by participating in the Artsakh war.