ON WHICH LEVEL OF GOVERNMENT DID CONFUSION OCCUR?
James Hakobyan
Lragir, Armenia
Nov 21 2006
The ruling party in Armenia is an amazing thing. One of its leaders
is fond of accusing journalists of making "analyses when they are
not sober", meanwhile the government, which includes this leader too,
decides to promote production of vodka in Armenia. However, besides
this controversy, there is another one. The head of state encourages a
healthy life, whereas the government, which is allegedly implementing
the pre-election program of this president, spurs the production of
alcohol. Although, on the other hand, there is nothing surprising
about the decisions of the government of a country where a sportsman
advertises vodka.
It is surprising that the government, for instance, does not care
about the fact that the industry in Armenia declined in 2006. This
gives rise to an absurd situation. The government states that its
goal is to boost exports. They are announcing that the government
makes sufficient efforts to encourage local industries. Instead,
however, production and exports are declining. Hence, either it is
not true or the government does not perceive the difference between
export and import. The second option is quite possible considering
the bad command of Armenian of our officials. And since these words
sound rather similar, in other words, the difference is not big,
the members of government simply mixed these words, and thought they
wanted to promote exports, they accidentally promoted imports.
The way out could be a test for the members of government. This can
be done without interrupting work. For instance, the prime minister
may suddenly say to a minister during a meeting of the government,
like a teacher in class, for instance, "Mr. Abrahamyan, export this
document from the hall of the meetings of the government, please,"
or "Mr. Manukyan, import these customs data to your folder."
In this case, however, the question occurs who should test the prime
minister. President Robert Kocharyan could do but first someone else
should test him to find out on which level of the Armenian government
the terms "export" and "import" are confused that results in the
decline of production.
Although it is also possible that the decision on promoting the
production of vodka will settle all the problems, and the industries
will start growing again. Simply the producers have not managed to
replace the assembly line for the production of alcohol. And since
all the factories undertook transition simultaneously, production
was brought to a halt, and the rate of production and exports declined.