The head of ANC faction Levon Zurabyan describes the Deputies of the fifth convocation as such.
– Though the 2012 report of the Control Chamber has been in the center of interests and analysis by media for several months, and the passions around it seemed to have settled down, but recently the passions of the said report again inflamed at the Parliament. It was interesting that it especially become the target of the Republican Party. Why or with what the said report was not liked by the political majority.
– For years, the Control Chamber has submitted much stricter documents, but no one had talked about them. I would like to remind you that for the first time there were references made to the scandalous findings of the Control Chamber, when in 2011during the dialogue with the authorities, the Armenian National Congress prepared a well-grounded document, including the findings of the Control Chamber regarding the budget misspend. Moreover, the ANC, our faction often uses the CC’s findings and justifications. No matter you want to consider it immodest, but the attention of the CC report started from the time when we entered the parliament and began to criticize looting, theft, wastes of budget of the country intensively using the CC reports. In other words, something that was made silent, now they can not make it silent, because on every occasion we are reminding about these findings. And a strange situation started. First, no matter how they tried to make it silent, the public realized that simply looting of the state budget is going on. In 2009, the report clearly states that randomly chosen four per cent of budget expenditures were checked and a theft and waste of eight billion Armenian drams was discovered. This means that if we take all the stats, and do extrapolation, it will turn out that during one year, in 2008, a half-billion dollars was stolen, which was proved by CC auditing. In fact, the report of 2012, in this respect, was much weaker: there are facts of the cable and bio-toilets, that were flagrant facts, because it was proved that ten times more money was spent than was necessary. But no matter how shameful examples are brought, one can always counter that they are simply episodes or individual cases. The strong point in the report of 2009 was that not a few cases were brought but inspections by statistical sampling were performed. Only after when we mentioned it in our report of 2011, they did not refer to it anymore. The CC, unfortunately, stopped giving general assessments of how much is wastes from the budget. But at least they gave an assessment to which everyone referred. That is, 701 billion Armenian drams misspent from the budget was estimated by CC President as money available in the field of severe corruption risk. If we translate it in a human language, it means that the main part of the budget is simply robbed, misspent, and stolen. Everyone understood it. Now the Republican Party is trying to get out from it. It seems that there are two opinions about their viewpoints as to how it can be done. One wing has decided that the best way to self-justification is to shout ahead of the opposition – catch the thief, like all thieves are going. It’s a known step. The other side, however, is trying to follow the way of denial and lessen the effect of these findings. It is obvious that this is a war going on between the two parties. But I’m pleased with it. Both tactics are beneficial to us: one the one hand, they are trying to conceal the truth, on the other hand, however they take it on themselves, the issue gets a great public response.
– And who is to blame, especially when Gagik Jhangiryan said in his speech that during the discussion with the ANC faction the CC President has told that during the last two years he is not sending the results of CC studies to the RA Prosecutor’s Office, because he is disappointed from the said body. The CC President said that for criminal responsibility the law places restrictions on their part. The Deputies recommended that the government introduce legislative changes, and the Deputy Prime Minister Armen Gevorgyan said that it would be better if MPs do it. So, why are these findings for?
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– In general, the current parliament looks like a choir of innocent angels, where everyone speaks about the fat and lucky bureaucrats, about robbers. They have fully adopted the vocabulary of the opposition, the ANC. As one of the Deputies said very correctly that they no longer consider such statements as correct, they are already using such expressions. But they give no names. And they want us, the naives, or our people, naive society think that, let’s say, this multi-billion dollar plunder is taking place during the management of Serzh Sargsyan, and the general authorities and leaders of this country as Serzh Sargsyan, Tigran Sargsyan, Hovik Abrahamyan and others, are not aware of it. Here, there are two options. Option number one – I really do not know. Although in that case, I am sorry, we deal with insanity loafers who are absolutely no competent and generally do not know the ways to govern this country. This option, of course, is very difficult to believe because the statements publicized by them prove that along with the plunder of the state budget, they are gradually accumulating millions. Well, let’s synthesize, this proven looting of the budget and simultaneous enrichment of the country’s general authorities. I do not think there will be someone who will convince the option that these people do not understand anything, do not know the situation, and this looting proceeds by itself, and for some reason, they become wealthy. What conclusion we arrive at: we deal with, as Levon Ter-Petrosyan says, corrupt from top to bottom, with the systematic looting. Using the state authoritative system, they plunder the nation in a systematic and comprehensive manner, and, by the way, the law enforcement bodies who were supposed to stop looting also serve for this purpose. What are we supposed to do with such a regime? Is there another way left to do rather than to stand up side-by-side with people and send these thieves to the landfill of history?
– And when is ANC going for active operations, rallies, protests, etc., as you said to send the thieves to the landfill of history? – If there is a political force, who can be blamed at least for being passive or not organizing rallies is ANC. For five years we are engaged in unprecedented activity of organizing mass rallies in Armenia. We had cycles of several breaks, but in the same 2011, we held more than 20 rallies, including 24-hours rallies. This is normal in policy. If you constantly deal with rallies, you can outwear the political wave. That’s why we always calculate and hold rallies along with political processes.
Now, yes, we are in the period of pause that is conditioned by a few facts, and one of them is that people are simply tired of constant rallies and elections. Although the ANC has held several meetings during summer, because the political processes had been hot, but now this is not the situation that we must ignore the fact of summer. And, indeed, it turns out that deterioration of the social situation, very often, as they say, must reach the bone, so that the people will stand up. We keep our hands on the pulse and from the moment when we see that we can start the effective political process, do not think that we will straight away enter into fight. – People will really feel the wave of increase of price from July on their skins. Do you think that a social riot, however, will take place in Armenia, in the fall, because the history showed that social riots can not happen in our country? – I agree with you that, for some reason, such a dogma is brought to the head of people that social riots can not happen in Armenia. Social riots were restrained in Armenia with the consciousness of people and with prudence of the opposition because we all understand that there is an issue of Karabakh. Armenia can not afford that the state machine, the army, the police, etc., are dissolved for months, as it happened in Egypt or Tunisia. Now these springs are available in Armenia, they operate, but it seems that the authorities do not learn lessons from it. They do not realize that they can bring the process of oppression to such a degree that even these springs may no longer function. Now they are bringing our country closer to that border, when a collapse of the state and financial system may happen. But in this case the opposition will not be able to stop anyone. The role of the opposition in this case would be trying to transfer all these to a civilized and organized channel, and trying to build a political process where the transfer of power is made smoother and without shock.
Conversation held by Nelly GRIGORYAN
“Aravot” Daily
