Levon Ter-Petrossian, the first President of the Republic of Armenia, talking about eliminating corruption and establishing law and order on September 21, expressed an idea that those issues were easy to solve, since they had nothing to do with the mentality and traditions. The only thing needed for that was the goodwill of the government – if they decided not to steal, they will not steal. Ter-Petrossian is right in the sense that these problems have nothing to do with the national mentality – in normal countries, our citizens are as law-abiding as the other citizens of those countries. The word “traditions” is not the right one in this case either, although one can talk about the state traditions in a broader sense. However, if the problem is with the goodwill, why did they steal when Ter-Petrossian himself was in power? Although the head of state personally had nothing to do with it, but, for example, thieves and robbers accounted for 50% of the National Assembly members elected in 1995. (Now that percent has increased to 75%.) It seems to me that explaining corruption by merely personal and not institutional reasons is like the naïve faith that the “bad king” can be replaced by the “good king” and the problems will be solved by that.
Lately a taxi driver – this is our population’s focus group – expressing his ordinary “popular” judgments on the independence of Armenia, drew the following conclusion, “Our country will not be independent unless these speedometers are eliminated.” So when he is able to break the law remaining unpunished. Well, it is hard to convince these people not to steal.
The way out is to figuratively set up “speedometers” at every turn. I.e. to create mechanisms of social and state supervision, thanks to which stealing will be not only very dangerous, but also unprofitable. For example, when cargo passes the customs, if you don’t have a “sponsor,” they will no doubt demand a bribe from you. What is the solution? To find honest customs officers? It is a utopia. However, one can set up a lot of cameras in the customs house and those cameras send signals to a few competing agencies, as well as an NGO and after that, the “smart guys” of the customs house will think twice before “taking anyone for a ride.” Certainly, those people should be paid a decent salary, along with that.
And those who claim that sometime in the future, there will be people governing Armenia who will not steal just because of their lofty moral principles, the people who say that are either romantics or populists.
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ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
