I cannot bring myself to blame the current authorities for deciding to raise pensions starting this April. For tens of thousands of people, it is by no means the same whether they receive, say, 58,000 or 63,000 drams. And they will certainly find something on which to spend the additional money. To suspect pensioners of misusing their own funds—as Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan once did—is the height of cynicism. Besides, it is, in the end, a personal matter for each individual.
The government should be criticized for something else. When the 2026 state budget was being approved, the prime minister stated that even raising pensions by one thousand drams would cost the budget billions. It follows that the government had carried out certain calculations and concluded that increasing pensions at this stage was not advisable.
But as we can see, the pre-election campaign is not unfolding in a favorable direction for the ruling Civil Contract party, and they are seriously concerned about their chairs. One sign of this is the SOS signals being sent to the European Union—“Come and save us, Putinist propaganda is suffocating us.” (It is well known that they brand any opponent a “Russian agent.”) The tender hearts of Brussels officials, it seems, cannot withstand such plaintive appeals and assist the reproduction of Civil Contract both with money and with “manpower.”
In such circumstances, when the chairs of Civil Contract members are under serious threat, populist steps must also be taken on the domestic front. And now it appears that either no calculations regarding those billions were made, or that those calculations pale in importance compared to keeping their seats. Budget expenditures not originally envisaged will be carried out within a pre-election logic.
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Where will those billions come from? They will not, of course, reduce their own bonuses. I suspect they will once again have to borrow. Their imagination and skills seem insufficient for anything else.
…It is also interesting whether Veolia Water carried out calculations before announcing a reduction in water supply hours. And did it coordinate its statement with the Public Services Regulatory Commission?
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
