YEREVAN. – It’s apparent to everyone that the government of the Republic of Armenia has the political will to fight against corruption, and it’s consistent and will continue to be consistent in this matter. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on Friday said this at the start of the meeting of the Anticorruption Policy Council.

“When we are saying that we have been able to uproot systemic corruption from Armenia, this record shows from the reaction of the public,” he said. “In these documents I saw data that, with the surveys that took place in May, more than 84 percent of the citizens of the Republic of Armenia reported that they haven’t been involved in corruption cases; this is an important record.

“But, also, I want to record that over the last year we have some institutional problems in terms of the fight against corruption, and difficulties in the sense that the fight against corruption and the investigations of corruption crimes and the recoveries of the caused [damage] as a result of corruption aren’t going to the extent and scale that us all and the public have the right to expect.”

In Pashinyan’s words, the current combat against corruption in Armenia needs to be strengthened through the creation of new respective institutional organizations.

“There are numerous objective and subjective issues here,” the PM added. “During this time, we have done a quite extensive and high quality work to decide on the directions of our anticorruption strategy, and to record the further institutional development in the fight against corruption.

“The political record is that our government will be consistent in the fight against corruption; compromises [in this regard] are ruled out. We have formulated a political task that zero public tolerance toward corruption shall be formed in the Republic of Armenia.

“Today we will discuss the anticorruption strategy, action plan; this has yet to become a government decision, it shall be circulated. But we believe there already is a document on the basis of which we can carry out very serious work.”