Commenting on the statement made by Gagik Tsarukyan, the leader of the Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP), in Brussels that people who were up to their armpits in corruption
struggled against it, Hayk Babukhanyan, an RPA MP, said during a conversation with journalists today: “Such statements that are more political than practical can cause unnecessary tension in the pre-election period. And you know that the president of the country has always called for not turning elections into conflicts. Turn it into mere competition of ideas, proposals, conceptions of the future of our country and our people. Therefore, I think that one shouldn’t strain the situation. The country leadership led by the president pursues a clearly defined anticorruption policy; that is why the president of the country, the prime minister of the country have talked many times about struggling against oligopolies, corruption and the facts that a set of high-level officials are in prison today, the fact that many officials have undergone administrative punishment, have been dismissed….” In response to a question whether he didn’t think that it was just a pre-election trick, Babukhanyan assured that it hadn’t happened in the pre-election period, it had happened much earlier, “The case of the chief of the traffic police was one year ago. What pre-election period?” In response to a question of www.aravot.am whether he knew any corrupted official now, he said: “If I knew, I would surely apply to the prosecutor’s office. Certainly, there is corruption in our country, but it is a serious task to reveal it, to bring it out. One cannot put someone into prison based on mere wish or assumption. Let us not forget also that the PAP has been a ruling force, a member of the coalition for 5 years; so if there was corruption in the country, we can ask our PAP colleagues ‘You have been in the coalition for 5 years, if there was corruption – and it was there – why didn’t you struggle against it? Weren’t there people among you who supported corruption so that it is not revealed?’”
Hripsime JEBEJYAN
