The 15th session of the“Hayastan” All-Armenia Fund, headed by RA president Robert Kocharyan, began with a moment of silence and condolences for the victims of the plane crash in Sochi. The introductory speech in the beginning of the session was short and didn’t take that long, “The fund is already a stable institution and is famous both in Armenia and the Diaspora.”
At the beginning the members elected three new board members and then watched a film dedicated to the fund’s accomplishments in 2005. After that journalists were asked to wait outside. The governmental representatives inside the hall were given an opportunity to ask questions. NA speaker Arthur Baghdasaryan left the hall very soon and didn’t want to talk to journalists. R. Kocharyan left the hall late. At that time journalists were interviewing Andranik Margaryan. The frequently asked questions concerned the tragedy of May 3. Andranik Margaryan said that they would provide 1,5 million AMD for families of the victims. Besides that, he said that there was a special bank account, where everyone could transfer money.
As for the session, the prime minister said that they had planned to spend all the money of this year in Karabagh. “We can solve our problems in Armenia with our own financial means”, said the prime minister. It seemed as though Arkadi Ghukasyan would be most glad to hear about the implementation of the programs in Karabagh, but as it turned out later, Mr. Ghukasyan was disappointed. “There are things that I like and things that I don’t like. I have more expectations. I think the Diaspora is a very big institution and can provide more support”, said the president of Karabagh. It is worth mentioning that 70.000 out of the collected 12,7 million USD was transferred from Karabagh. We can’t say that A. Ghukasyan doesn’t have any reasons to complain, He is mostly not disappointed about the people that provided this financial support, but the people that are responsible for taking control of the flow of money. In other words he is disappointed in the work done by executive director of the fund Naira Melkumyan. “We have problems with the quality of the work implemented and think that the fund should work more efficiently”, says the president of Karabagh.
It is no secret that the relations between A. Ghukasyan and N. Melkumyan are not well and rumor has it that there have been recommendations to replace Mrs. Melkumyan. As for N. Melkumyan, she says that these are just rumors.
As for A. Ghukasyan, he didn’t deny such possibilities and said that this issue might be a matter of discussion in the future, “This is the board’s problem, I can’t make a decision by myself. I think that we should solve the problem; there are several ways. This issue has to be discussed sooner or later”, said the president of Karabagh. Anyway, if they don’t organize one more meeting, N. Melkumyan will stay as executive director one more year because there was no such issue in the agenda of this meeting. As for N. Melkumyan, she is satisfied with the fund’s job and says that the fund has a high reputation. She also discussed the fund’s problems and said that in spite of their expectations the donations collected in 2005 were less than they had expected. She said that before most of the support was provided by rich people, but this time most of the transfers were made by average citizens.
N. Melkumyan doesn’t worry about the fact that the number of people donating large sums is less now and believes that the annual income of the fund will cover about 20-25 million USD in the future. Two years ago the board had an aim to increase the sum of donations up to 10 million within five years. It means that they have done more during these two years. As for keeping the tendency and getting more donations, N. Melkumyan says, “We should just present good programs in order to make our Diaspora representatives believe in them and make the donation”.
Of course, it is good to have good programs, but it is better to implement them well. For instance, how can the words of Arkadi Ghukasyan concerning the bad quality of the implemented projects make our compatriots living in the Diaspora believe in the effectiveness of these programs? It will be wrong to assume that A. Ghukasyan is interested in these works only; the problem is much more complicated. The authorities of Karabagh are trying to take the fund and the program under their control, thus they want to start it from the leverages leading to the implementation of those programs. This can only be done in Armenia if there is a way of stealing money. Donors understand all these changes and it may affect the reputation of the fund.
There is one more interesting thing. The fund has information about its biggest donations and donators in its “golden report book”. There aren’t any donations from Armenia exceeding 500,000 dollars. Only the Armenian union of producers and businessmen has paid more than 250,000 dollars. The next two large donators are the bird factory of Lusakert and Zangezurtranshin companies (each of them donated 100,000 dollars). No one says anything about this, but many people think that the Armenians living in the Diaspora are a source of money and they can grab that. As for these Armenians, they see how many expensive cars there are in Armenia, even more expensive than their cars are. They see how some Armenians waste thousands of dollars in casinos outside Armenia. So what? Would you pay if you were in their place?
As for the collected money, 12 or 22 million isn’t enough for such a fund. Let’s not forget that this money is collected once a year around the world, where there are over 9 million Armenians and, according to Forbes, the entire sum that Armenians in the Diaspora can provide makes up 100 billion dollars.