‘Masses have been freed from army service, one has meningitis, the other one – chronic enhancement of the ear’: Pashinyan

The leader of “Yelq” bloc, Nikol Pashinyan spoke about the privileged people, who manage not to send their sons to army service during the discussion on “the Status of Army Service and the Soldier” in Parliament. According to him, a huge number of people is freed from army service: “That number is so that you look at it and do not know whether to believe your eyes or not to. 90 out of 100 are freed because of health issues, 10 by academic deferment. I agree, let solely half of 90 have issues, have an illness, and the other 45 depict a corruption field. Wherever you go in the Republic of Armenia, masses have been freed from the army service. One has a meningitis, the other one – chronic enhancement of the ear and etc. The 90% of our problem is connected with the field of healthcare.”

Pashinyan finds that the issue is not solved through this program: “We leave this 90 untouchable, in essence, we will squeeze it to 88, the 5 that are fake academic students due to their dads, a part of whom are sitting in this hall, will go under pancreas meningitis, it comes out, that this bill is against 5 people who study honestly and fairly.”

Pashinyan explained that in the Republic of Armenia, pursuant to January 1, 2017 data, 12,698 wanted are in place, 11,286 of them are being investigated for avoiding army service. It is 88% of the wanted. Throughout the previous 3 years the number of those people has increased by 1100: “What do they escape from? They escape, because every time you say –  we establish a justice by this, one cannot understand, one looks to the right – there are freed people, to the left – not serving people and one does not understand why should he serve?”    

For Pashinyan, it is ununderstandable, why should all students of Gevorgyan Seminary be given deferment and one of the students of radiophysics make use of it and through that we develop a military-industrial complex: “Back then the Minister of Agriculture was blessing the fields, now we make blessing our frontline a priority component of security.”

Hripsime JEBEJYAN