Recently, one of well-known lawyers called my attention onto a regularity that in Armenia and alike countries, the Codes “are becoming thicker and thicker,” whereas in the West – “thinner and thinner”. We are working on describing all the cases in the most detailed way for not leaving a loophole and add new Articles, whereas the traditions established in the West and the culture “facilitates” the laws. This regularity is known since very ancient times. In the 6-5th centuries B.C., a Chinese philosopher Laozi used to said, the more that laws and regulations are given prominence, the more thieves and robbers there will be. This can be understand in two ways. On the one hand, the abundance of laws generates temptation in people to bypass them; on the other hand, due to the abundance of robbers, new laws are created. Overcoming this closed circle may happen, as it is accepted to say, due to the political will of the government authorities, but the latter is formed by the majority of citizens, through the will of executing the laws.
The last two initiatives under discussion at the National Assembly are the vivid examples of “overgrowth” of the laws. Accordingly, we need for the large business communities pay taxes. Are the names of these enterprises and business communities a secret to anyone? If desired, is it difficult to check which part of their turnover is “black” and which is “white”, and gradually to “whitewash” the “black”? The current legislation gives all the tools for it. But it can only be done when the big enterprises and the higher authorities are not the same people. Otherwise, they will treat like Gogol’s famous heroine, who whipped herself, which practically is impossible. Instead, a new law is invented, under which the small businesses should “give away” the big ones, demanding documents from them, and in case of failure to submit, appeal to appropriate instances. Even in the biggest desire, it is not a functioning plan.
The same for the maternity allowance. Some of the entrepreneurs are engaged in frauds, write down fictitious salaries and bonuses (probably, with a “kickback”), so that based on them, in the future, women would receive “a maternity leave” worth of millions of drams from the state. To put an end to this highly objectionable practice, a new law is written down, according to which, not the fraudulent entrepreneurs are punished, but… the working mothers. All of this is wonderfully worded by another famous Russian writer Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, “The severity of Russian laws is alleviated by the lack of obligation to fulfil them.”
ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
