www.aravot.am inquired from Police Colonel Hovhannes Kocharyan, the chief of the passport and visa department of the Police of the Republic of Armenia, whether he thought that the claims of the opposition – Armenian National Congress (ANC) leader Levon Ter-Petrossian, in particular, thinks so – that voting lists had been padded were ungrounded. Mr. Kocharyan responded, “No claim, no argument of your mentioned politician has any legal grounds. We have explained many times what the reason that there is an increase in number of registrations of the population in the state register is. There are two numbers of persons registered – the number of persons who have come of age since 2008 and the execution of a set of rights was conditional on registering in the state register, as a result of the change in policy of the Cabinet, so, people were compelled to register. The citizen could get a passport without registration, whereas since 2008 it has become a reason for denial in the passport office, they were compelled to register, the number started to increase. Certainly, those numbers seem to be padded, but they are not.”
Do you really believe, as a citizen of the Republic of Armenia, that under the conditions of such emigration there are 2 million 482 thousand people in Armenia, not to mention voters? Mr. Kocharyan responded, “Who knows whether there are so many people in Armenia or not? I can say how many people have been registered in Armenia and no one can say how many people have left Armenia without giving up registration, there is no data. Don’t forget that the results of the census can be summarized only in October 2012 and only then the number of people who are permanently absent from Armenia will be a bit clearer.”
In response to our observation that they assured every year that there were clear lists, Mr. Kocharyan said that the promises of this year had serious grounds, because voting lists had never been made public, had never been accessible for the public, but this year the Electoral Code had offered that opportunity and it was obvious that the number of inaccuracies would be less than in previous years.
People had serious complaints about the passport department of the Police, in particular, because they had to put 1000-2000 AMD on the table for everything. In response to our question whether he saw any progress in diminishing corruption, Mr. Kocharyan said, “I am sorry that you haven’t noticed that improvement recently. I think that passport services have grounds for pride in terms of that. The reforms of the last 2-3 years have decreased corruption risks substantially. And corruption is a problem of the state apparatus and it threatens not only the passport department.” In response to our observation that really, as the saying goes, fish begins to stink at the head, he said, “It is not an issue of fish’s stinking at the head, it is just important that it is very limited and strictly controllable. I think we have solved that problem. Corruption cannot reach an uncontrollable scale in the passport service. It is impossible, because as opposed to the bureaucracy functioning a few years ago that was just a bureaucracy not controlled legally in any way, the passport services issued passports as they liked, today there is passport legislation. I don’t rule out that there will be cases of corruption, but I assure you that the passport and visa department is not the section that will cause such serious concerns.”
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