BOXING WITH CORRUPTION

In essence there has been no serious attempts to bring corruption under control, in our reality. Time after time you can notice certain livelihood in this term, but very soon everything becomes quiet.
Partially it is because they do these steps in the wrong sequence, at first they announce about fighting corruption then they start to think of how to do it. In such circumstances the issue of diagnosis remains unanswered.
Today when fighting corruption is really in process, it is very important to understand which is the principal goal of this struggle.
The first version is the formation of the personal agenda and a personal political figure by the new ruling power. In that case PR is extremely important, the actions that most probably won’t change the situation, but instead they will help consolidate the power and will become noticeable for the society.
The second version is that the ruling power really wants to fight corruption. What should they do?
There are lots of recipes about how to fight corruption, but those scenarios that exist in the world don’t suit Armenia, because there are lots of peculiarities. We must simply choose the best one.
For example lets take the formation of electronic government from Estonia, the correlation of social security with spotless service – from the USA, the free opportunity of the civilians to use information services – from Scandinavian countries, the control on the low ranking officials – from Singapore, South Korea, etc.
We must be realistic. The key element of fighting corruption is political rivalry. We should have healthy mechanisms replacing corrupted high-ranking officials. It is difficult to expect that one day this political rivalry will appear in our reality.
Yes we must impartially exercise rights; something that has never existed in our reality and it is hard to expect that one day it will appear according to the law or the decree of the President. At present we must employ comparably simple tools: for example reforming the selection of judges, punishing for corruption in law enforcement structures, etc.
Whereas we must understand that in our country it will be very difficult to live without the tradition of taking and giving bribes. So we don’t exclude the demonstrative arrests of famous figures, but hardly will they reduce the number of corruption cases.
By the way we must also take into account the fact that the society is absolutely not enthusiastic about this demonstrative struggle against corruption. They are too experienced to understand the difference between the real struggle against corruption and the shows on TV how they catch certain officials red handed.
If in our reality fighting corruption moves in its worst version: if they don’t put emphases on juridical reforms, protection of small and average business and political rivalry, everything will be worse, and corruption risks will only increase.
In our view it is high time to restrict the rights of all the officials by law. Particularly it would be helpful to clearly characterize all the restrictions and requirements towards the high-ranking officials. This will be a litmus test for the recent anti-corruption initiatives.
If the ruling power fails to control the activity of the high ranking officials and their income, fighting corruption will again be postponed for a certain period of time.
KAREN NAHAPETYAN

| Home | >>

E-mail article | Discuss article new!

RSS © Hayots Ashkhar

Headlines for July 17, 2008

BOXING WITH CORRUPTION
KAREN NAHAPETYAN
In essence there has been no serious attempts to bring corruption under control, in our reality. Time after time you can notice certain livelihood in this term, but very soon everything becomes quiet. ...
WASHINGTON WELCOMES
The official Washington welcomes the commitments undertaken by the Armenian and Azeri Presidents for proceeding with the Karabakh settlement process within the frameworks of the OSCE Minsk Group. As announced ...
ARMENIA 1997-2008
“Tigran Mets” printing house has published a book entitled “Armenia 1997-2008”. The book presents a summary of the activities carried out during the 10 years of Robert Kocharyan’s presidency. “We are ...
WITHOUT BREACHES
According to the arrangement made before with Nagorno Karabakh authorities, OSCE mission conducted an extra-ordinary observation near village Yusifjanly of Aghdam region, on the border zone of NKR and ...
NO ESSENTIAL CHANGES IN ARMENIA’S FOREIGN POLICY
LILIT POGHOSYAN
In response to our questions, ARA PAPYAN touches upon the prospects of regulating the Armenian-Turkish relations “Judging by Serge Sargsyan’s public statements on improving the relations with Turkey ...
THE CONSEQUENCES OF CHANGING ARMENIA’S ORIENTATION
2
According to Russian expert MIKHAYIL ALEXANDROV, “The victory of the radical opposition would mean a change in the foreign geo-political course, and Armenia would be oriented to the West. Such change ...
TO ADVANCE OUR INTERESTS IN THE REGION
“We must continue our relations with both the West and Russia, not underestimating our importance for Russia. In my view one of our mistakes is that we always overestimate Russia’s role for Armenia and ...
THE COMPETITION TO BE ANNOUNCED ON JULY 17-18
During the session of the committee regulating public services the package of the documents on the organization of the competition for license of the third operator of the mobile service and radio frequency ...
US ASSISTANCE
The US House of Representatives and the Senate Allocation Committees will separately discuss the bill on the foreign assistance of the financial year of 2009. On March, 2008, congressmen, co-Chairmen ...