Karen Andreasyan: “Human Rights Defense is a free service”
Human Rights Defense is a service which should be delivered free of charge without payment, nominee for the RA Ombudsman's post Karen Andreasyan said on Wednesday.
"The more applications the ombudsman receives, the better for him," said Andreasyan immediately correcting himself, "I mean, the number of applications speaks about public trust."
Addressing the parliament on March 2, Andreasyan asked journalists to give a true coverage of the issue for people to have a complete notion of ombudsman's jurisdiction.
"People should finally realize that an ombudsman cannot administer judicial justice," said the coalition nominee adding that he cannot stay away from politics.
"Even if I keep out of politics, it will deal with me," he said.
In reply to ARFD MP Lilit Galstyan's question how he assessed the condition of people arrested for their political views, Andreasyan said he could not say anything unless he got familiarized with the cases.
"The political forces which proposed my candidacy did not set any preconditions about my future activity. I am grateful to the coalition for proposing my candidature but I owe nothing to them," he said urging the parliamentarians to vote for him.
"The more votes I receive, the more unconstrained I shall feel in the post of Armenia's human rights defender," said Andreasyan.
Lilit Galstyan announced that the coalition candidate has an important virtue - he will remain loyal to the authorities.
The Armenian Parliament is to appoint Armenian Ombudsman by a secret ballot on March 2. The results will be announced upon completion of an hour-long voting. According to Armenian Constitution, the candidature of the Ombudsman should be supported by a minimum of 1/5 MPs.The Ombudsman is elected for the term of 6 years.
Former Armenian Ombudsman Armen Harutyunyan resigned to take up the position of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Representative in Central Asia.
