Probably this was the reason that “Justice” alliance secretary Viktor
Dallakyan asked the same question and got the same answer from Prime
Minister Andranik Margaryan several times. A.Margaryan brought the
written mutual agreement with him to the National Assembly and started
to read it noting beforehand, that some “deformations” had been made on
it during the coalition meeting. The reached agreement is the
following: “To solve the problem of reimbursement of the frozen
deposits in “Armsavingsbank” to citizens included in the list of
families getting welfare within the “Poverty reduction strategic
program””. After reading the statement, A.Margaryan explained what that
meant: “We have poverty reduction programs, and we came to a conclusion
after discussions with the people, that we are able to solve that
problem in the scopes of the programs and make compensation”. Meanwhile
he tried to justify why RP changed its opinion unexpectedly after the
announcement of the president, who declared starting this process after
January 1, 2006 and agreed to include this program in the budget as a
separate line, while they had refused the reimbursement saying that
there were no resources in the budget for it. “Yes, the government and
RP didn’t agree with this program, but we came to a final agreement and
in the scopes of “Poverty reduction strategic program” we are going to
provide reimbursement for citizens who are in deep financial
crisis”,-said Andranik Margaryan. A.Margaryan didn’t answer
journalists’ questions concerning deposit reimbursement and said: “I
have already said everything”. And member of RP Galust Sahakyan
remembers the “Rule of law” political party, the genocide and
unpleasant things like that when hearing the word “deposits”: “I was
disappointed during these past couple of days, because there are more
serious problems than this one in the country, but no one pays
attention to them. Even more, there is a tendency in the society to
leave everything aside and concentrate on the deposits for their
delight of one month or one year. Our goal is not to please the society
with this reimbursement, but to support families in developing their
financial conditions”.
To our question: “Robert Kocharynan spoke about the rapid steps to
reimburse the deposits last week. Doesn’t he pay attention to those
serious problems either?”, G.Sahakyan answered: “Of course we will
solve some problems this year and the problem of the deposits will be
already solved for the society this year. The problem is to lead the
nation in a way, which will let the society feel confident about the
future of their children, but not to satisfy them with short-term
delight”. In response to the question on whether it wasn’t possible to
make reimbursement at least to the welfare recipients from the budget
foreseen for the year of 2006, which covered 1 billion USD, he said
that the problem wasn’t about the money. “We have money to give, but we
collaborate with international organizations and take loans from them
like the other countries do. Our country is in such conditions, that we
take privileged loans and these kinds of loans are given to those
countries, which don’t make extra expenses from their budgets. That is
why I think that the deposits must be returned in a way, which will
support the future development of the country. And if we follow the
previous principles and reimburse $10 USD in contrast to 1000 rubles,
this will be just a short-term delight for the citizens. And these
expenses will cause serious jeopardy for our country in the future.
I.e. we should be more serious. The political powers never ask the
citizens to pay attention to EU, where a very serious problem is being
solved now, and no one pays attention to it .There are not even any
serious activities taken by the opposition, which can seriously raise
this issue, which is one of the most important issues of our national
development”. We also wondered about those “serious problems”, to which
no one paid attention. Galust Sahakyan was insulted and said: “The
issue of recognition of the Armenian genocide, the problem of Karabakh,
the problem of the constitutional amendments…When the political powers
actively speak about the deposits, they never say to the public that
there is another way for development written for them, that the whole
world speaks about that and that they should vote for it. Instead of
this they concentrate on the deposits, and even if those deposits are
reimbursed, I think the pleasure will last not more than one yearand
then it will be over. And in case when there is this kind of issue in
our agenda, I will tell the people that I will agree with that because
of their wish, but if they complain later, it will not be of RP
concern”. Oppositionist Viktor Dallakyan, in response to the opinion of
Galust Sahakyan, that there are no politicians in Armenia thinking on
serious issues and the opposition doesn’t take its job seriously, he
said: “Before saying these kinds of things and discussing the serious
problems and the reputation of our country, or making evaluations, they
must first of all think that a country becomes a good country, only in
case of providing the simple democratic principles: forming and
changing authorities by fair elections. Accordingly those people, who
make election violations, shouldn’t make these kinds of evaluations.
And they should first of all remember about their violations before
speaking about the Genocide problem, about the problems of Karabakh and
national security because it is a very serious crime against the
nation. First of all they’d better think about this”. A lot of people
are interested in the fact why RP joined the government and doesn’t
agree to make deposit reimbursements and thus tries to win the
political dividends, which “Rule of law” political party wants to win
by solving this problem.
In connection with this Viktor Dallakyan said: “I meant this when
saying that some people worry about political dividends. Probably the
Prime Minister thinks that the coalition is going to use this with
pre-election purposes later, and this is the reason he worries. No one
should concentrate on dividends. Dividends may lead this process to
failure. I welcome the opinion of Mr. Sahakyan, that people must get
reimbursement and they shouldn’t be cheated. As for the resources for
this reimbursement, first of all they’d better pay their attention to
shadow economy, which covers 60-65 % of our economy. Only according to
International Monetary Fund information, the big companies don’t pay
taxes of $300 million USD every year. There are a lot of sources for
this, they’d better tax the monopolistic businesses under Robert
Kocharyan’s control: the mafia of flour, gasoline, tobacco and
medicine. They shouldn’t speak about resources, they will have
resources if they don’t steal”. In addition, A.Margaryan noted, that
according to their preliminary agreement they will provide 1 billion
dram for this program, 200-300.000 of which will be used as technical
support. As for indexing, they will discuss this problem and find
solutions at the National Assembly. V.Dallakyan worries about this task
and thinks, that the government may “promise” now, but later during the
discussions, announce that there are no resources in the budget for
this. And in this case the problem will be undermined again.
P.S. There are 170.000 welfare recipient families in Armenia,
and it is not clear yet how many of them are depositors as well.
According to informal calculations, their number doesn’t exceed 50.000.