One of the main, recent political issues concerned the deposits of the people living in the Soviet Union. The political powers were trying to privatizing the copyright for the return of the deposits. They made so much noise that it was difficult to understand whether that was a political or an economical issue. Of course the most active party was “Rule of law”. This political party wanted to remind their potential voters that this was their promise and had been included in their pre-election program. The “Republican Party”, headed by the Prime Minister, came up with something and was recognized as a winner. Parallel to this, the executive power didn’t take the legal responsibility for deposit reimbursement. Instead of this they promised to work out a regulation program and provide 1 billion dram in the budget of 2006 for deposit reimbursements. “Rule of law” insists that this was a result of their hard work. We can hardly agree with them because, first of all, there was really no work done. They brought a document into the NA, which contained information about this issue of reimbursement in ten ex-soviet countries. At least this document appeared in the official web page of the NA. The information about these ten countries is not systemized. It seems that they have collected all kinds of information without analysis. For example, it is written that deposits are returned in Turkmenistan starting from 1993, but with a very amazing percentage. But deposits were reimbursement at this percent in Armenia too: 5 dram against 1.000 rubles. This issue really defines the character of Armenian society. In the informational books of the Soviet Union, it was written that Armenia filled the first place with the capacity of its deposits per citizen among the 15 countries of the Soviet Union. No official information is published now. But Soviet Armenia had about 8,5 billion rubles in the Savingsbank in 1990. This means that this problem is going to be very difficult in Armenia. Probably this is the reason that this decision was made so late in Armenia. For example, this process started in 2003 in Russia (40 USD against 1.000 rubles). Georgia started this process in 1993 (100 USD against 1.000 rubles). The experience of these countries shows that these countries, which are still in the transition period, cannot take care of the Soviet Union debts. That is why each country defines its own standards for reimbursement. The highest percentage of reimbursement has been stated in Lithuania (250 USD against 1.000 rubles). If we don’t take into account the illogical percentage of Armenia and Turkmenistan, the lowest percentage was in Kazakhstan (7 USD against 1.000 rubles). In other countries this sum is in the range of 70-100 USD. No country is able to reimburse all the money at once even if the percentage is this much. That is why they had to work out terms for reimbursement except of the percentage. For example in Russia they decided to make reimbursement to people over the age of 80, poor people and war veterans. Ukraine worked out a more original standard: in case of forming a census they promised to reimburse half of the relevant sum. The rest- 50 %- was going to be reimbursed too, but not in cash: by transferring money against their debts for communal expenses. Besides Georgia, all the other ex-soviet countries worked out law regulations for the implementation of this program. I.e. every year when approving the budget, the parliament decides how much money will be provided for this reimbursement. In Georgia this program is realized on the base of the decisions of the council of ministers. Probably this is the reason that the lowest level of implementation among these countries is in Georgia.
The experience of the old “brother families” remains. In Armenia, the government could apply this standard by evading the NA. I.e. the government promised to reimburse 200 USD against 1.000 rubles (it is more in comparison with other countries). Instead of this there wasn’t any legal act which would oblige them to realize this reimbursement program. Their only responsibility is that they must provide some money in the budget of 2006 and then decide which group of people will be reimbursed. Probably 5 % of the 1 billion dram will be spent on the technical support to make that decision. These kinds of drawbacks make us think, that this process was brought up purposely in the framework of the Constitutional referendum. I don’t mean the beginning of the deposits reimbursement process, but the beginning of promises to start this process. Accordingly we can say that this fact was not a result of our economical success and development. It is a political decision and only time will show whether it is real or populist.