NA Deputy Hmayak Hakobyan doesn’t like the methodology on fight against corruption adopted by the government and ratified in the 2007 state budget draft. According to him this methodology doesn’t conform to the recommendations made by numerous international organizations.
The state budget draft, which was being discussed at the National Assembly yesterday, offers to raise the salary of statesmen by 40% reasoning that it might be a good way of fight against corruption. Hovhannisyan is against the mentioned method of fighting against corruption. In order to make his presentation more serious he cited the statement of the Freedom House organization, made in 2005, which says that we have a corruption mechanism established, the basis if which is the development of tight relations between the political and economical elite, in the result of which the political and economic elite are represented by the same people.
This segment of the state budget draft Hovhannisyan finds extra and offers to provide the anticipated amount of money to people, who have problems with speaking instead of giving it to statesmen as the latter live not on their salaries.
Yesterday during the Q&A with the government Hovhannisyan asked the government members whether they have reasons on raising the statesmen’s salary. The problem is that the statesmen have their own businesses and thus that method is not the best one in eliminating the corruption on their part.
Before speaking about the viewpoint of the government, we’d like to mention that Hovhannisyan was angry about this recommendation of the government not only because of salary increase of statesmen but also their pensions. He mentioned, “I achieved the right of opposing this recommendation because I was one of the seven honest deputies, who voted against the “Draft on raising the deputies’ pensions”. I expect the same approach from the government. In particular the government opposed the suggestion of raising the deputies’ pensions.”
As a response to Hovhannisyan’s statement of being an honest deputy RA Justice Minister, Davit Harutyunyan said, “I think it’s the most grateful work to state that one is honest and then go ahead and vote against drafts.” Hovhannisyan responded, “I didn’t give you any grounds to expand on honesty. But as you went into details let me add that when the government was opposing the draft on raising the deputies’ pensions and I joined them. Now I have the right to oppose the draft on raising the salary of government members. If you were claiming it’s not right to raise pensions I claim that it’s not right to raise the salaries of statesmen by 40%. And this happens in the event when pensions are raised only by 27,8%.”
Speaking of methodology Harutyunyan advised Hovhannisyan to review the success stories of countries, which were able to overcome corruption. “If you review you will see that the methodology is the same. The statesmen shouldn’t make little salary. The salaries must be raised. The government will not ever agree with our attitude that the salaries are enough. We really think that in terms of methodology we follow the same principles as the countries that successfully fought corruption. The 40% increase of salaries doesn’t mean that it’s the most important warranty of corruption fight. Indeed it is necessary to apply other methods as well but the raise of salaries is one of those,” stated Harutyunyan. However, this approach was still dishonest for Hovhannisyan as the statesmen at present are making 300 thousand AMD and the 40% or 20% raise will mean increasing the salaries by 100-150 thousand AMD.
However Harutyunyan disappointed Hovhannisyan by saying that the government is not going to review its methodology and thinks that the mentioned method is one of the most efficient tactics of fight against corruption but not the only one. “When Singapore was reporting how it succeeded in fight against corruption their Prime Minister said, “Perhaps my salary is higher than the salary of any prime-minister in the region.” We should really try to pay high salary to statesmen and try to ensure they don’t have any other side incomes. We think we adopted a right policy; it assumes fight against corruption. If you review our methodology you will find serious provisions in strengthening the fight against corruption,” Harutyunyan wrapped up the approach of the government.