Freedom of Information Center of Armenia.

Gevorg Hayrapetyan

On January 13, 2006 the Freedom of Information Center sent an information request to the RA Minister of Transport and Communicatrion Andranik Manukyan requesting to provide the minutes of negotiations between Armentel and the Ministry. In the letter dating January 25, 2006 the minister’s deputy V. Arakelyan wrote:

“The RA Ministry of Transport and Communication has passed all the necessary documents concerning electronic communication to the RA Public Services Committee. Thus, the request should be addressed to the RA Public Services Committee”. Following the ministry’s “advice” on January 31, 2006 the Freedom of Information Center applied to the chairman of the Public Services Committee Mr. Robert Nazaryan. In his letter dating February 6, 2006 Mr. Nazaryan wrote: “Please be informed that the RA Ministry of Transport and Communication has not passed the minutes of negotiations between “Armentel” and the Ministry to the RA Public Services Committee”.

Contradiction is fairly obvious. One of the officials lied. It was only necessary to find who. The FOICA sent the answer of the Public Services Committee to the Ministry of Transport and Com. In responce to this, we received the following note. “Taking into account the fact that certain minutes of the negotiations between “Armentel” and the Ministry of Transport and Communication contain commercial secrets, the Freedom of Information Center needs to specify concrete minutes needed”. In this way, the Ministry didn't even try to deny Mr. Nazaryan’s reply but even accepted their readiness to provide the information requested. Meanwhile writing the reply, the RA Ministry of Transport and Communication did not take into consideration that there is no need to specify concrete minutes needed, since in the RA law “On Freedom of Information” it is written: “If some part of the requested information is subject to denial, information concerning the second part should be provided” (article 8, point 2). Refering to the law, On April 17 the Freedom of Information Center sent the third request to the Ministry, requesting to provide the minutes which do not contain commercial secret.  

This time, in responce to our third request, the Ministry denied in written form saying that they could not provide the requested information because there is no sub-legal act adopted by the Government regulating the information provision procedure. We would like to remind the Deputy Minister Mr. Araqelyan that the absence of by-laws could not ever be a lawful justification for a denial. The RA Constitution should be applied directly. Even if the FOI Law did not exist, the RA Constitutional provistions would have been enough for providing information.