By Gayane Tonikyan

After the post-electoral crisis in March, 2008 President Serj Sargsyan came up with the idea of forming a Public Chamber - an all-inclusive, representative council where all voices from the public will get a chance to be expressed. The suggestion has been welcome by some and heavily criticized by others. To get a snapshot of this diversity of opinions ICHD held a Town Hall Meeting in Yerevan, where about 120 participants - NGO representatives - discussed the possible scenarios of the Chamber formation outcomes, namely "Status Quo", when the society in large is not being represented, "Imitation", when the Chamber fails to carry out its major functions and turns instead into another bureaucratic agency and "The Voice of the Many", when the institution turns into a real forum for expression of various social perspectives. The THM results have been presented to the working group responsible for the development of the concept paper on Public Chamber. A summary of these results in Armenian is available for download below as well.

The full version of the Viewpoint is available in Armenian version.