As we have informed in our past publications, prime minister Tigran Sargsyan has prepared policies and procedures for the responsibilities and powers of ministers, which is entitled as “Reforms of the RA state administration system and policies”.
The mentioned policies and procedures are to limit the powers of ministers; a part of their powers are taken from them and centralized in the government administration. The policies and procedures have been distributed to all the 18 ministers about one month ago to read the content and inform about their opinions in written form. According to our information, most of the ministers have given a negative opinion about the policies and procedures. According to our information, negative opinion has been given by the minister of environmental protection Aram Harutyunyan from the RPA and the ministers appointed by the quota of the Prosperous Armenia party. The same source of information assures that most of the ministers have sent positive opinions about the draft policies and procedures without having read. However, later when they read the draft they sent another letter with negative opinion.
It is not clear yet whether the government will adopt this draft or no. It seems this process of adopting the draft has been suspended due to active opposition on part of the ministers. Definitely the government will not give up and will try to make it happen. According to this document, most of the main powers of ministers are to be delegated to the head of the government’s administration. This official will have the powers for recruiting and appointing staff, managing financial flows, using material resources and organizing the work of the staff. The head of the government’s administration will be accountable not only to ministers but the government and prime minister personally. In all ministries and bodies adjacent to the government the processes of policy development and rendering services will be separated. The first one will be left for the ministers, the second one will be delegated to the administration chief or another agency. By the way, according to this draft policies and procedures, all agencies, services, separate projects and other related institutions will be separated from ministries. The powers for issuing licenses, accrediting and other related policies will be given to agencies. At the same time, the mentioned institutions will work to do the orders of ministries, and in addition to being accountable to the ministries they will be accountable to the prime minister as well. The rule of appointing the administration chief will be changed as well. Till now this position was appointed by the agreement of the corresponding minister, but hence it will be done by the prime minister only. Ministers will not have full control over their staff either. Ministers will have to work with their staff through the chief of staff. The part about the positions of public servants is very interesting too. “The interference in the organizing of the work of administration on part of the political team (deputy ministers, advisers, press secretary, assistant, consultants) still continues. It results in multiple accountability and the scope of accountability is not clear,” reads the concept of policies and procedures. In fact they are going to take the powers for making decisions, recruiting staff and making expenses from the ministers. Ministers will become ordinary staffers and will depend not only on the minister but the chief of administration as well. In a word, if this concept of policies and procedures is enforced, it may collapse the state system as a result of giving total control over the state administration to the minister or government, thus they will have tools not only to control the government system but interfere as well.
The draft contains some explanations aimed at justifying it. Certainly the first and main explanation is the “honest desire” to raise the level of efficiency of the work of the government system. “The main goal of the policies and procedures is raising the management efficiency as a path to clarification of political and administrative decisions and efficiency on part of the government system,” writes the explanation part.
Of course it will be naïve to think that the goal of this draft is the mentioned one only. It could be done, as Tigran Sargsyan often says, by “demonstrating a political will”. A good example of such political will would be his decision to make drivers follow the traffic law. Likewise he can demonstrate a political will to stop corruption, exclude the mechanism of working on commissions in the governmental system, etc. It seems the goal of this draft is also connected with elections. By taking the powers from ministers they are taking their opportunity to work for their teams as well. Parties will not be able not only to use their ministers to appoint their party members in office to strengthen their teams, but collect votes either. About two years have remained till the next parliamentary elections and it seems the authorities are getting ready for these elections. Of course if there are no extraordinary elections till then.