Who is Responsible for the Termination of “The Millennium Challenge” Corporation Project?
00:00, August 3, 2011 | Press Release
“The Millennium Challenge” Corporation-Armenia project reveals and serves as a brilliant indicator of the inconsistency of political authorities activities in relationship to the needs of society.
“The MCC Project is a brilliant indicator that the RA Government members overvalue their personal interests as compared with state interests”, noted Artur Sakunts, a former member of the MCC-Armenia Stakeholders’ Committee, regarding the MCC project, the term of which is coming to an end. However, Artur Sakuts, refused to evaluate the MCC 5-year project because rational and impartial monitoring had not been carried out.
Nevertheless, Sakunts addressed some of the factors which negatively impacted the implementation of the MCC-Armenia Project. The first difficulty was conflict of interest. “As the project monitoring body, the members of the Stakeholders’ Committee were not entitled to participate in the project proposal call; however, some of members, who owned businesses, applied and won”, stated, Artur Sakunts.
The second problem was that the Republic of Armenia did not ensure or guarantee the six criteria of MCC inclusion which included political freedom, economic growth, etc. The resolution made by the US Government to terminate the MCC-Armenia project was not a surprise at all. “We were warned that the project could be suspended if the RA Government did not change its strategy. Robert Kocharyan claimed they would allocate money from other sources; however, now let them try to find new funding sources.
The RA Government should be held liable for the termination of the project in line with pseudo-NGOs, which did not in fact represent the interests of the civil society, but with the majority of votes in the Stakeholders’ Committee took those critical decisions”, points out Artur Sakunts.