GIFTED MINISTER AND UNGIFTED CORRUPTION
JAMES HAKOBYAN
Story from Lragir.am News:
Published: 14:56:51 – 09/12/2011
December 9 is the International Anti-Corruption Day. This means
that today is the International day of fight against the Armenian
authorities, because the Armenian authorities embody the corruption.
The corruption is the basis of the ruling system of Armenia. In
case of its elimination, the system will collapse. In answer to such
affirmations, the big and small representatives of the power say that
corruption exists in all the countries of the world, even in the most
civil, development, democratic and legal ones.
This is true. It will be an exaggeration to affirm corruption doesn’t
exist in the U.S. or France or any other European country.
But when this circumstance is the answer to the accusation or criticism
of the systemic corruption existing in Armenia, then it is nothing
else but substitution of concepts.
Sure, there is corruption in civil and developed countries too, but in
those countries corruption is a crime which is punished. In Armenia,
corruption is a phenomenon for which explanations and justifications
are provided.
Say, when it is said that despite the Constitution provisions,
businessmen become MPs in Armenia, the government does not adopt a law
and does not initiate the revelation and punishment of this fact, but
gives explanations such as the law is incomplete and needs improvement
in order to deprive those people of the possibility to be MPs.
There is a clear corruption phenomenon but there is no relevant
fight against it, only fragmented explanations, which just legitimate
corruption.
While in a legal country, the Prosecutor’s office, the National
Security Service and the Police would engage in the revelation of
the issue and would punish those who break the law.
But this can shake and even destroy the governmental system, so there
is no fight against the serious corruption phenomenon.
The same goes for the other spheres where there is also serious
corruption. For instance, officials have luxurious movable and
immovable property but they register everything on behalf of their
“movable” or “immovable” relatives.
Everyone knows that there is corruption here because the property
in reality is the result of the business activities of officials,
which they try to conceal. It seems that the law enforcement system
is meant to reveal everything and not to make anyone conceal the
corruption results.
But in Armenia the law enforcement system does not try to deal with
the corruption to find out that the property belongs to the official
and not his mother-in-law, and the official bought the property with
suspicious money.
Instead, everything is explained by the incompleteness of laws and only
through the improvement of the law, we will eliminate the corruption.
It is clear why the law enforcers do not deal with these issues.
Otherwise, the system would collapse.
There are plenty of such examples. If in Europe, a minister resigns
because his friend’s factory received the ministry’s orders, or because
he spends holiday in a too expensive for his salary place, in Armenia
such things can be maximum considered election exotics or political
vendetta. Mainly, the minister’s friend would be declared a benefactor
who cares for the state orders. And the Minister could be awarded for
his services to the country for being so gifted to have such a friend.
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