We are not used to make long-term plans for our lives. It is, perhaps, partly national peculiarity, but basically, a phenomenon caused by external factors. Planning can be made when the country is in stable condition. During the Soviet period, for instance, I was planning to become a PhD (I achieved), then an associate professor, then a professor, to write about music, educate a few private students and so on. The collapse of the Soviet Union hurled a stone on my plans. Having a positive and light attitude towards life, I did not make a tragedy out of it. They did and up to now are living under the influence of this stress. In addition, for 22 years, we are constantly living in the “turbulent” situation and we can not say what will happen tomorrow. Not to speak about a long-term plan.
Uncertainty about the future, to some extent, is generating from the mistrust towards the authorities. Here, the real and popular folklore are intertwined and become a stable stereotype. Recently, for example, someone explained to me quite seriously, “Do you think that a ton of heroin was really identified? No, they present that they have identified it, they have shown it and now they will little by little sell it. Have you seen that they had burned the heroin?” That’s it. Overwhelming majority of Armenia’s population does not believe that any of our state officials, even theoretically, is capable of doing something good. Of course, those, who “ex officio” are engaged in propaganda, also contribute to the strengthening of this folklore.
The habit of not making long-term plans and not believing in any initiative of the authorities has been intertwined in the funded pension issue. “If you give two penny to them (i.e. the government) and tomorrow go and get it, they’ll tell you what money you, you have not given me any money.” The roots of such thinking are too deep, and it is impossible to change it in one day. The matter is not only the money lost in the Soviet savings banks, nor the banks “exploded” in the first half of 90s. The matter is that the government and the parliament are constantly changing the rules of the game. In particular, they are increasing the tax burden. Recently, for example, I, not a big businessman, was made to buy a $1,000 CCM. The matter is that we do not believe that our taxes that we are paying reach our pensioners and budgetary workers, and are not possessed by our managers, this way or another way. These taxes are added by an additional 5 percent tax defined for people up to 40 years old. No matter they say that it is not a tax payment, this 5 percent is perceived accordingly.
I, particularly, see the solution of this “funded” issue not in endless delay, anyway, this reform is necessary, but in adoption of a decision agreed upon by all parliamentary factions and, naturally, in compliance with the Constitution.
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I hope that times when the president was calling the members of the Constitutional Court and imposing them to pass this-or-that decision are gone.
ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
