REFERENCE TO CONSTITUTION AND LAW OF KARABAKH IS CONSIDERED IMMORAL
Hakob Badalyan
Lragir.am
11-07-2007 17:19:54
The political elite of Armenia, in the stern, even in the extremely
relative sense of this word, has a rather interesting idea of law
and morality. Of course, many may say it is already an achievement
if the Armenian elite have any idea of law and morality. However,
this is the case when they had better not have any than have what
they have now. And what they have is obvious from their pronouncements
on the important problems of the nation. And the strangeness of this
idea is that the outstanding and not so representatives of the elite
consider law and morality as different things. For instance, one of the
"glamorous" representatives of the Armenian or pan-Armenian elite,
NKR President Arkady Ghukasyan (nobody can state that Ghukasyan is
not literate and therefore is not "glamorous") stated regarding his
third term that the law allows him to make this move but he is a
moral person and will not run a third term.
What do we see? We see that unlike Arkady Ghukasyan the law is immoral,
and Arkady Ghukasyan considers not using this right as morality. In
other words, law and morality are different in Arkady Ghukasyan’s
judgment. It is difficult to make another conclusion when a person
says the law allows for something but he is moral and will not do
it. Consequently, the law allows for immoral things, which allows
thinking that the NKR president, intentionally or not, considers the
law of his country as a source of immorality. For if it is moral not
to run a third term, to run a third term would be immoral. Long live
Amsterdam. A tax reform is necessary to impose profit tax, income
tax and VAT on immorality.
If this controversy of law and morality were voiced by only this
representative of the elite, we could somehow overlook it, but tell
me who your friend is and I will tell you who you are. Meanwhile,
the president of Nagorno-Karabakh Republic is known for his rather
intimate and friendly relation with another representative of the elite
Garnik Isagulyan, adviser to the president of Armenia. Of course,
there is no doubt that the friendship is based on human traits,
but if there is no common worldview, the traits are not enough for
a lasting friendship. Recently we became convinced that there is a
common worldview at the Friday Club which hosted Garnik Isagulyan.
He said it is immoral when the ineligibility of one of the presidential
candidates of Karabakh in accordance with the Constitution is
manipulated.
Those who follow the election in NKR know that the "common candidate"
of the government Bako Sahakyan is concerned, who is not eligible
because according to the NKR Constitution the president must have
resided in NKR during the past 10 years. Certainly, one thousand
justifications, formulations, explanations could be found for this
inconsistency, which Garnik Isagulyan tried to do, saying that in
1997-1999 Bako Sahakyan lived in Moscow and represented the interests
of Karabakh and was a citizen of Karabakh. Certainly, the law does
not state that if a person does not live in Karabakh, he or she
stops being a citizen of Karabakh but the law says that besides ten
years of citizenship the candidate must have ten years of permanent
residence. If citizenship and residence were not different, the law
would not distinguish these two but would specify only citizenship.
In other words, it is obvious that there is a problem with the law.
Meanwhile, Garnik Isagulyan thinks it is immoral to remind about
it. In other words, Karabakh has a Constitution which has a provision
speaking about which is immoral. Consequently, it again appears that
the provision of the Constitution and morality, according to Garnik
Isagulyan, are different things, otherwise why should reference to
the provision be considered as immoral?
It is clear what Arkady Ghukasyan’s and Garnik Isagulyan’s opinion, as
well as the opinion of their supporters and friends is based on. They
say that in the case of Karabakh the nation’s unity is more important
than the law. In this case, can these people explain for which cases
the law was made? If it was made to display to the world, doesn’t it
occur to these people that the world does not only look at the law but
follows how it is applied. In other words, making laws is not enough to
create a democratic image for Karabakh because first it is necessary
to honor the law. In this case, it would certainly be better to adopt
the Moral Code, instead of celebrating the Constitution, which would
include a single point: "law and morality are genetically incompatible,
and any reference to the law is immoral." It would be more honest,
economically more profitable and politically more flexible.