168: At the expense of Samvel Karapetyan, they do charity for CP

Although the authorities have seized the management of the HEC since July of last year, revoked its license and announced that they are going to nationalize it, the HEC remains completely the property of businessman Samvel Karapetyan. This will be the case until a sales transaction is made or an overriding interest is recognized.

It turned out that HEC legally belongs to the head of the opposition political force, but actually manages the power. The CP leader freely uses it for the interests of his own party in the elections.

On the eve of the elections, the KP manager of the HEC, probably without a second thought, disinterestedly distributes bonuses to the employees.

“About 3,700 employees of the National Economic and Social Committee were paid an additional leveled bonus for the month of March, each in the amount of 30,000 drams (taxes included).

Starting from March, the actual increase in the salary threshold of our employees will apply exclusively to all employees with a gross remuneration threshold of 250,000 drams (including taxes), regardless of their professional and service status and performance indicators, and the additional reward limit is set at 30,000 drams (including taxes).

As a result of this reform related to almost 50 percent of the employees of the HEC, their salaries have actually increased by 12-25 percent, and the financial resources necessary for the implementation of such a decision have been generated in the salary fund both at the expense of the head office of the HEC and branch managers, as a result of waiving their bonuses from the beginning, and due to the prevention and exclusion of inflated expenses in other directions,” he said the other day. Romanos Petrosyan, the temporary manager of the National Technical Committee of Ukraine, announced on his Facebook page.

Let’s leave aside the fact that those amounts distributed under the name of bonuses are not included in the tariffs and are paid to the account of Samvel Karapetyan’s property. But isn’t this an election bribe distributed by the KP governor on the eve of the elections, which is given with the expectation of wooing 3.7 thousand employees of the HEP and getting their votes in the elections?

The law enforcement bodies, which make cases against the political opponents of the government for everything, even make hiring and paying salaries in pre-election headquarters or party offices a basis for arrest, ignore such phenomena, although everyone understands its purpose, even if they don’t say it out loud. For a long time now, we have seen how the government levers are used not only to silence the opposition and remove them from the arena, but also to distribute hidden electoral bribes by various means and to woo the voters.

One such example, which we witnessed very recently, was related to the HETC owned by Samvel Karapetyan.

The Public Services Regulatory Commission decided to reduce the fees for connecting new subscribers to the network. Those fees were sharply raised not by the former “robbers”, but by today’s authorities, who stand and sit and talk about the people’s concerns. It was raised several times, through the same committee, which decided to take a small step back from its previous decision on the eve of the elections.

At one time they raised it, let’s say, 4 times, now they increased it 3 times and they are trying to present it to the consumers as the biggest achievement before the elections. It’s okay, even after that reduction, the new consumer will pay several times more for connecting to the network than he was paying before that increase.

It should be noted that this increase had nothing to do with HEC and the owner of HEC, no matter how much they try to present it that way and create such an impression. The National Energy Agency cannot change tariffs at its own will. Tariff changes are in the domain of the commission and the commission calculates, justifies and decides what it should be.

At one time, the need to increase the connection fees by several times was unequivocally justified. Since the opposition was the elections and there were many complaints about it, they started to justify the opposite. With those justifications, they reduced the connection fees. They have been talking about reducing for a long time, but they decided to do it 1.5-2 months before the elections, in order to show that they supposedly care about consumers. It seems that they had not climbed in time, and that too many times. At that time, they did not worry that they were putting a serious financial burden on consumers. Now, when the elections are near, they remembered the consumers.

No matter how much they try to put a different name on this or interpret it in a different way, it is a hidden attempt to encourage the voters. In recent months, the authorities have made such attempts neither for the first time nor for the last time. they raise pensions, invest in insurance, provide interest-free loans to farmers, subsidize the prices of fertilizers and milk, promise to provide apartments to former military officers, raise salaries in various institutions 2-3 months before the elections, give bonuses and bonuses, and so on.

There are so many such pre-election “charities” done by the authorities for the CP at the expense of the state and state funds, that it is difficult to remember them all one by one. Despite this, they are no longer satisfied with the state, and now they have moved on to doing “charity” for the CP at the expense of the owner of HEP and the head of the opposition political force.

HAKOB KOCHARYAN

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