WHAT THE GOVERNMENT WILL THINK THIS TIME
Hakob Badalyan

Lragir.am
11:58:41 – 04/02/2009

To some extent, the response of both the society and the government to
the assassination of the deputy chief of the Police Gevorg Mheryan is
clear and predictable. The society must say or think that unfortunately
this assassination once again proved what kind of country Armenia is,
how free the criminals act there, what the climate of permissiveness
is when no small or big incident, either an assault or a murder, is
revealed, what happens when the law enforcers are busy repressing
political dissent rather than controlling the state of crime in
the country. The government must naturally get angry, the president
must hit his feast against the table and say enough, the case must
be revealed immediately and the wrongdoers must be punished, it is
necessary to raise the effectiveness of the work of the law enforcers,
and so on.

Almost the same was the response of the government to the assassination
of Shahen Hovasapyan, the head of one of the divisions of the State
Tax Service. As you can see, the next was Gevorg Mheryan. It is
difficult to tell what will happen after Mheryan’s murder. Perhaps
the law enforcers will start repressing political dissent with
greater ardor. What else can the law enforcers do when they get one
instruction in front of the TV cameras and another instruction behind
the TV cameras? Lik e Shahen Hovasapyan’s murder, most probably
Gevorg Mheryan’s murder will not be revealed fully either, and the
society will never know who gave the order. At least, the precedents
make think so. It is even difficult to tell why a scandalous murder
is not revealed, our law enforcement system is not professional,
unable to make revelations, or the reason is that the law-enforcement
system gets quite other instructions to act. Will the system get the
instruction of revealing this murder fully?

It is also clear that many representatives of the government will soon
start telling the society that there is no need to make far-fetched
conclusions from one murder that Armenia is overwhelmed with crime,
and nobody is punished for misdeeds because scandalous murders happen
even in calmest countries, such as Sweden, where many years ago the
prime minister was killed on leaving the theater. The government has
such spokesmen who are able to make such cynical comparisons with
a serious expression on their face. In addition, for the state and
the society, the bounty killers at large are perhaps less dangerous
than these spokesmen because the freedom of bounty killers is the
consequence of the unrestricted presence of these figures.

On the other hand, cynical and strange though our observation may
seem, it is also possible that the criminals are not unpunished and
uncontrolled. And life in Armenia in the past few years is evidence
that this observation is more likely to be true. In other words, in
Armenia the criminals may be under the control of the government and
do what the government or separate groups of the government need. In
any case, it is obvious that either the government in Armenia can
do nothing about the criminals or the criminals are the government,
that is the government and the criminals act together.

There seems to be no other option, at least the activities of the
government do not allow considering a fourth option. In addition,
it is not news, simply more evidence comes, unfortunately.