209 out of 311 Judges Are New Appointments Since 2018, Says Supreme Judicial Council Chair

The vetting process in the judiciary, which was one of the main electoral promises of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's political team, has been completed by 80%, according to the Chair of the Supreme Judicial Council, Karen Andreasyan. He stated this in an interview with CivilNet.

Andreasyan explained what it means for the vetting process of judges to be 80% complete: "Out of 311 judges, 209 are new people, meaning they have been appointed since 2018." Discussions about the corruption of judges in Armenia are not new. International organizations have addressed this issue, and Andreasyan, while leading the Office of the Human Rights Defender, even published a report in 2013 that included 'bribery rates in the judiciary.'

According to Andreasyan, the solution was the removal of discredited judges, which they have largely already implemented. "We stated that significant changes should occur in the composition of judges in the judiciary's discredited state. Most judges should leave, and new ones should come in. This was the idea of vetting. The remaining judges also need to be reviewed, which is now called an integrity check," noted the Chair of the Supreme Judicial Council.

He mentioned that currently, 60% of judges are new individuals brought in by the Supreme Judicial Council, while the remaining 20% (from the reformed 80%) underwent integrity checks since they applied for promotions.

Andreasyan added that all judges should periodically undergo integrity checks conducted by the Anti-Corruption Committee. He emphasized that 90% of the opinions from that committee regarding integrity have been taken into account, while the Supreme Judicial Council made independent decisions on the remaining 10%. "If we were to fully satisfy everything proposed by the Anti-Corruption Committee, we would end up in a situation resembling a farce. In other words, they (the committee) decide whether the judge can advance or not, and whether a person can become a judge or not," Andreasyan remarked.

The Chair of the Supreme Judicial Council sees a "great injustice" in the fact that after these changes, people are just as dissatisfied with the judicial system as they were before the 2018 revolution. "There is a great injustice here, a significant inertia. It is becoming a national tragedy when the good is not recognized as good, and the entire system remains under constant mudslinging. This simply leads to hopelessness," he stated.