Armenians can see that the government has managed to fight against corruption. In spite of the fact that no one has been punished yet, the government is still taking steps for that purpose. It has even managed to use its right of proposing legal recommendations. A week ago, the government presented a bill to the parliament. But the parliament rejected the voting of “the bill on registering the properties and incomes of physical persons”. The MPs in the hall were actually the ones who were able to boycott it. This was not an unprecedented one within the framework of the anti-corruption program. According to another bill, businessmen that hide more than 3.000.000 dram of their income are subject criminal proceedings. MPs were very active when discussing the issue of criminal proceedings. Regardless of whether they are governmental or oppositional, all MPs together were trying to make everyone sure that there was no need to bring a criminal case against businessmen hiding that much of their income. In a surprising tone, they were saying that there was no need to take them to prisons and pay for their food with the money from the budget, when they could just pay and released. They said that it would be better to impose penalties. This means that they may injure someone when being in anger and then get off the hook by paying money. In fact, they want to make violations and be released after paying money. This doesn’t look like liberalism to me, rather the stupid idea of some ancient churches to forgive sins for money. The environment Armenians live in is looking more like an environment deprived of any morality. The parliament also boycotted the voting of the bill on instituting legal proceedings for stealing more than three million drams from the government, they think that “stealing three million from citizens” is not a crime and that the criminals shouldn’t be brought to justice.
Armenian MPs did their best not to vote for the bill on registering the incomes of physical persons. Can they say that they did it for the people? According to this law, physical persons getting more than 500.000 dram per month have to register their income and property.
The government didn’t choose a good time for presenting this bill to the parliament. The deputies are impatiently waiting for the moment when the Kond district of Yerevan will be sold, as well as the opening of the Northern Avenue, which is going to be a business center. Moreover, as we speak while they are waiting impatiently, the government is working on proposing such a bill. They don’t want to register their incomes, which are rising day by day, and in fact they gave a hard payback to the government by not adopting the bill proposed by them. They said that it would be very difficult for farmers and villagers to register their incomes. In regard to this, Armenian government representative Armen Alaverdyan said that our MPs elected from different territories didn’t know that villagers didn’t have that much income. The wage of deputies covers 260.000 dram, but most of them have businesses and receive much more income. Accordingly, after the adoption of this law most of them would have to register their income too. We understand that after voting for this bill things will not be easy for them. MPs are not sure whether or not the government (or other persons representing the government) will use that information for bad intentions and purposes other than proposed thereby. There have been many cases in our parliament when the authorities mobilized all their power with the purpose of adopting the laws they want. In such cases, some governmental bodies (even the national security service and taxation bodies) are ordered to get all deputies to participate and provide the necessary number of votes. Deputies are probably afraid of this too. But the government does its best to bring up these laws. The government has presented the mentioned bills to the parliament and will make deputies visit the parliament and vote for it again. After that, they will speak about their next step and new achievements in the fight against corruption in international institutions. We will have a new good law adopted under the pressure of international institutions. This law will be adopted, but will not work like many other laws. Physical persons will have to register their income, but society will not have access to this information. This information will be used only by the authorities with the purpose of pressuring businessmen. This is a good tool for that. For instance, in ancient Rome, senators (current deputies) were obliged to leave their doors open in order to let people see how they lived normally, i.e. how the senators that are elected by them live. One of them, Seneca, even recommended making glass houses for senators to live in. In that case, there would be no need to fight against corruption. Nobody paid attention to Seneca’s demand and in the end, the Roman Empire collapsed.