Hayots Ashkharh Daily, Armenia
Nov 3 2007

THE TRUTH AND UNTRUTH OF THE FIGHT AGAINST CORRUPTION

In ex-President Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s recent two speeches, as we
know, great importance was attached to the problem of corruption, in
which our country, as he said, is buried beginning from 1998.
What can we say; conducting PR on corruption has always been
popular. For instance let’s remember how Bolsheviks used to `work’ on
the eve of 1905 and 1917 revolutions, how picturesque did the young
members of `Karabakh’ movement use to describe the collapse of the
Soviet nomenclature, at the end of 1980. Judging from all, at present,
they are trying to use the same policy.
They extremely exaggerate all the rumors and real facts about
corruption and present it to the `simple people’. `Simple people’
become astonished, disappointed, and furious. They lose respect
towards the government in power, which, in essence is the goal of all
the before mentioned efforts. But here we need serious conversation.
The topic of corruption is `everlasting’ and `actual’ in our
country. They usually take bribe and `presents’, officials do
business, and the entrepreneurs buy position and mandate for them and
for their people.
Thousands of people are involved in it, whereas for most of them
corruption is far not an anomaly, it is a regular phenomenon, a way of
life. While officially they usually say that it is bad and that with
corruption we will never progress, etc. And by the way usually those
hue and cry about this phenomenon who are immersed in it from top to
bottom.
We absolutely don’t intend to call the fact of the existence of
corruption in our reality into question, and we have never stated that
there is no need to fight corruption. Though it would have been better
to speak about the growth of prices in the corruption market and the
increase of the corruption income rather than the growth of
corruption. I don’t think the number of the bribe-takers has increased
as compared to the `wonderful’ 1990-ies. The demand for certain
services is falling, for some increases. There is price increase, and
not because the officials have got spoiled, but because the amount of
money has increased in the country.
As for fighting corruption we should remember that the latter
nourishes the rather free attitude of our citizens towards the
law. Despite all the efforts of the recent years, the general level of
the legal culture and legal consciousness remains rather low, as
compared with the standards of `civilization’.
We can start long explanations on why it happened, to quote the
history, to look for and to find those blameworthy, but the fact won’t
change. In fact in our reality `you mustn’t’ means `we will try to
find ways’ to do what you mustn’t do.
That is why it is useless to fight corruption by means of stricter
criminal liability and oppressions. And hardly can the `perfection of
the legislation’, `the modernization of the institutions’ and
`administrative reforms’ work in this issue.
Only the introduction of state ideology and the ethics of service,
based on it (especially for the officials) can embrace our corruption
in comparably discreet frameworks. I would like to emphasize ` not to
put an end to corruption, but at least to embrace it in comparably
discreet frameworks, their service not to the abstract and impartial
law but to specific ideologies.
During the Soviet times they managed to observe law and order (by
the way inside bureaucracy as well) not only and not very much by
means of oppressions or terror, but by ethics and ideology. Clearly
speaking people used to believe that they were doing an important
state job. It was a sense of their life. But when in 1970-1980 they
stopped to believe in this ideology ` corruption started to grow, and
reached today’s volume.
We absolutely don’t advertise Stalinism; we simply clarify the
cause-effect relationship.

VARDAN BARSEGHYAN

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress