If this was only a question and not an article, we could answer it by saying that they get it the easy way (if the job is assigned) or the hard way (when the job is selective). However, let’s try to figure out why we live in such a reality. First of all, I would like to say that jobs are different and you don’t have to be a minister, a mayor or head of a department to be an official. For example, the press secretary or the vice-head of production (I understand that mentioning production in Armenia is like telling an anecdote, but in any case), the tax inspector or the girl that sits in front of the computer in the reception hall (the computer is nothing more than a game of “house-house” for the girl), school homeroom teacher or an electrician (or as we like to call it “the light man”) are also people who do their job. However, it turns out that most of the people that have jobs today don’t really know what they are doing. If we go deeper into the issue, we can predict that for Armenians, this issue begins from early age when the child must listen to his parents when it comes time to choose a profession. Basically, the parents steal the child’s opportunity to make decisions on his own at an age when he is on his way to becoming an adult. Perhaps that is the reason that there are so few Armenian adults who are able to be on their own. That is why Armenian citizens and political figures don’t rely on them, but rather, on Russia, America and Madagascar. But this is a different story. Let’s return to the topic.
The job of an official has been associated with power throughout time and in every country. Despite the well-being of society, the authorities of each time period (despite their human characteristics) have tried to appoint smart people who know how to do the job efficiently. For us, having a job as an official is immediately associated with money. We love money too much, more than “Green Cards”. As a result of that, instead of having professionals, we have more amateur ministers (for example Sergo Yeritsyan or Norair Davidyan), ministers “just for the fun of it” (Artak Sahradyan and Gagik Aslanyan), “trained” judges, press secretaries that have nothing to do with the press, unprofessional electricians and school principals who haven’t even received an education. I think that the reason for this is that during the Soviet Union, people used to get jobs as officials based on which political party they belonged to. Basically, if during that time it was obligatory to be a Communist to be an official, or a member of the Armenian National Movement in the beginning of the 1990s and a liberal-democrat or a Christian democrat being the worse, today it is all based on being republican, a federalist or member of the “Rule of Law” political party (in the worse case, “Hzor Hayrenik” (Strong Homeland) in order to be an official. As for the municipality, it is just like the rest of the European amateur institutions in Armenia and it plays no specific role (two officials have been added). I don’t know how much of the concept that “Jews have a cadre bank” is true, but I would like for the Armenian authorities to start thinking about this because by going from one political party to another (when everyone knows how the members of one political party give an oath and then flee to the other party in case of need) you can not build a nation. In addition, if the political parties don’t wish to fall in the same trap that the Communists and the Armenian National Movement did, I would recommend for them to have a “cadre bank” and not simply choose whoever they want just to fill the space (so that they can feel proud of themselves here and there of the number of members they have which has been proven unsuccessful). I almost forgot: today people still obtain jobs as officials in Armenia by soft talk and bribe. However, being the optimist that I am, I am certain that in the near future Armenians will not obtain jobs by soft talk and bribery, but rather just by soft talk and bribery. Those are the rules of obtaining a job as an official.
Far from being an official, A.K.