Once a man tried to prove that that the ideas of Diogenes were not true and asked him, “I am not you, right?” That is right, Diogenes said. He asked the next question, “I am a man, right?” “That is true too,” the philosopher said. Following this answer the man said that if I am not you, and I am a man it means that you are not a man. “This is not correct,” Diogenes said, “If you want to find the truth, then you should start the logical discussion from me”.
Recently “Heritage Foundation” published its annual report containing indexes of freedoms in 2008. This report has been widely covered by Mass Media. The Media reported that Armenia is in the 28th place among 162 countries of the world. It writes that we are the leading country among the CIS countries and that we are in the 15th place among 41 European countries. We are in better places in this list than Austria, Spain, Norway and a number of other countries. By the way, last year we were in the 32nd place, and during the previous year – in the 26th place. Why are we discussing this fact one more time if it has been widely covered before too? The problem is that there are details which have not been spoken about. We will speak about the facts, which have not been spoken about so far.
To have a high ranking in the list of economic freedoms indexes does not mean that the given country has good economic development and potential. These indexes are to show how liberal the economies of countries are. Economists have different opinions on whether too much liberalism in economies is good or bad. The situation is very strange: the previous authorities are criticized in liberalism, and the existing ones (they are considered to be conservative) are proud of the estimations given by “Heritage”. Certainly, despite any critics and opinions, these independence indexes have certain components, which are essential in order to have a normal development country. Such components are ownership protection, fighting corruption, etc. We wander whether the estimations by “Heritage” correspond to the reality. Legislations place a big role in such estimations. However, we believe that the Americans are not informed well about the fact how effectively those laws are applied and enforced. Besides that, hardly they know about the fact that the official statistics figures are painted in our country and different importers of the same product pay different customs fees. Besides these factors, there are other expressions in the indexes, which haven’t been discussed so far. It is worth mentioning that the index is built based on 10 criteria, which are estimated according to 0-100% estimation scale. The closer a country is to the point of 100, the more liberal it is.
The liberal level of trade was estimated at 85%, which is considered to be very good. However, it writes the following: “Unpredictable estimation of customs fees, partial application of the customs law, customs administration insufficient management and corruption tend to increasing trade expenses”. The investment freedom was estimated at 70%, which corresponding part writes the following: “The main obstacles for foreign investors are inadequate application of the law and corruption within the bureaucratic structures. Even though the privatization procedures were conducted successfully and were open to all the interested parties, they were not transparent”. The lowest estimations concerned the protection of ownership rights (35%) and corruption (29%). The report writes the following concerning ownership right: “The judicial system has inherited degraded structures and corruption from the Soviet times… In November, 2005, changes were made to the Constitution aimed at increasing independence on the part of the judicial system, but the real results are not seen yet”.
As for corruption, the report writes that it is widespread in the country. Heritage makes its estimations concerning corruption based on the information provided by “Transparency International”, which are not so good.
The median estimation of the mentioned ten factors is 70.3%, due to which our country has a better position than many other countries, including some European countries.
As for the estimations of “Heritage” concerning Karabakh, we think that it would be better to complaint concerning the term “occupant” in the report instead of praising our good position in the list. As Diogenes said, the discussion should start from this point in order to come to the right conclusions instead of closing our eyes with good figures. This would be better, if our people don’t like another philosopher’s idea, which says that lie is better than refusal.