Tweet
Lragir, Armenia
Dec 6 2007
CORRUPTION IS MONOPOLIZED AS WELL
The office of prosecutor general has arrested a few tax and customs
officials involved in false entrepreneurship. This is being announced
through almost all the media, especially television. In fact, the
effort of the prosecutor's office is a heavy blow to corruption in
Armenia, and corruption will not get over it for a long time. It
should not be ruled out that corruption may yield to the office of
prosecutor general because it seems to have nothing else to do.
However, for whatever reason any revelation of corruption in Armenia
involves the lower ranks only. For instance, nurses are arrested, or
officers of regional tax or customs services. The office of
prosecutor general of Armenia never brings charges against any
high-ranking official. The impression is that the higher ranks are
crystal purity, and the most horrible things take place in the lower
ranks. It is possible that horrible things occur in the lower ranks
but for whatever reason they are reflected in the higher ranks. In
addition, they are reflected so magnificently that no logical
explanation can be found how a minister with a salary of a few
hundreds of thousand drams lives like a millionaire.
Formally, there is an explanation. Our ministers, the prime minister
or the president do not have property formally belonging to them,
which does not match the size of their legal salary. Their property
formally belongs to their friends, relatives, family or
mother-in-law. However, Armenia is a small country, and everyone
knows one another, and whom the villa built for an ordinary citizen
belongs to, and who is behind the construction, commerce or other
company owned de jure by an ordinary businessman.
Legally, it is difficult to reveal such cases of corruption. For
instance, it is difficult to prove that a 60 or 70 year-old woman
working at home could not sustain the oligarchic life of the
minister, who is related to all this only because 20-30 years ago or
earlier her daughter married the future minister or other
high-ranking official. But if legally it is impossible to reveal, it
is not difficult to bring into being the mechanism of moral
responsibility. In other words, the minister who lives a life of a
millionaire, the public official who wears suits, shoes, shirts, ties
worth thousands of dollars, stays at five-star hotels which are
located in famous resorts, rides in expensive cars, owns summerhouses
in different parts of the country, cannot do this secretly, like he
cannot obtain all that on his salary. And the president who
guarantees Constitutional order in Armenia should know about it. If
he cannot instruct the office of prosecutor general to investigate
and punish the corrupt official, he should assume the responsibility
and dismiss the minister to show to the society that the Armenian
government does not tolerate corruption in reality, not in speeches.
Meanwhile, over these years no high-ranking government official has
been dismissed. In addition, they are behaving more freely, showing
off their businesses they run apart from their office.
And in order to make life more interesting and secure, they sometimes
make preventive efforts against corruption not to let the lower ranks
become competitor to the higher ranks.
JAMES HAKOBYAN
Dec 6 2007
CORRUPTION IS MONOPOLIZED AS WELL
The office of prosecutor general has arrested a few tax and customs
officials involved in false entrepreneurship. This is being announced
through almost all the media, especially television. In fact, the
effort of the prosecutor's office is a heavy blow to corruption in
Armenia, and corruption will not get over it for a long time. It
should not be ruled out that corruption may yield to the office of
prosecutor general because it seems to have nothing else to do.
However, for whatever reason any revelation of corruption in Armenia
involves the lower ranks only. For instance, nurses are arrested, or
officers of regional tax or customs services. The office of
prosecutor general of Armenia never brings charges against any
high-ranking official. The impression is that the higher ranks are
crystal purity, and the most horrible things take place in the lower
ranks. It is possible that horrible things occur in the lower ranks
but for whatever reason they are reflected in the higher ranks. In
addition, they are reflected so magnificently that no logical
explanation can be found how a minister with a salary of a few
hundreds of thousand drams lives like a millionaire.
Formally, there is an explanation. Our ministers, the prime minister
or the president do not have property formally belonging to them,
which does not match the size of their legal salary. Their property
formally belongs to their friends, relatives, family or
mother-in-law. However, Armenia is a small country, and everyone
knows one another, and whom the villa built for an ordinary citizen
belongs to, and who is behind the construction, commerce or other
company owned de jure by an ordinary businessman.
Legally, it is difficult to reveal such cases of corruption. For
instance, it is difficult to prove that a 60 or 70 year-old woman
working at home could not sustain the oligarchic life of the
minister, who is related to all this only because 20-30 years ago or
earlier her daughter married the future minister or other
high-ranking official. But if legally it is impossible to reveal, it
is not difficult to bring into being the mechanism of moral
responsibility. In other words, the minister who lives a life of a
millionaire, the public official who wears suits, shoes, shirts, ties
worth thousands of dollars, stays at five-star hotels which are
located in famous resorts, rides in expensive cars, owns summerhouses
in different parts of the country, cannot do this secretly, like he
cannot obtain all that on his salary. And the president who
guarantees Constitutional order in Armenia should know about it. If
he cannot instruct the office of prosecutor general to investigate
and punish the corrupt official, he should assume the responsibility
and dismiss the minister to show to the society that the Armenian
government does not tolerate corruption in reality, not in speeches.
Meanwhile, over these years no high-ranking government official has
been dismissed. In addition, they are behaving more freely, showing
off their businesses they run apart from their office.
And in order to make life more interesting and secure, they sometimes
make preventive efforts against corruption not to let the lower ranks
become competitor to the higher ranks.
JAMES HAKOBYAN