Yerevan's anti-corruption campaign going nowhere
rick murphy
Yerevan's anti-corruption campaign going nowhere
Thursday, December 10, 2009
YEREVAN, Armenia - Daily News with wires
Despite 'some progress' in Armenia's anti-corruption drive, experts
say the fight against corruption is going nowhere. 'The government is
focusing only on filing criminal cases – the campaign is not a real
fight,' says Arthur Sakunts, head of the Helsinki Citizens' Assembly
in Vanadzor
Amid civil-society calls for Armenia to take part in the United
Nations’ Dec. 9 International Anti-Corruption Day, some local
observers said Armenian President Serge Sarkisian’s anti-corruption
strategy has thus far been unsuccessful.
The government’s official corruption crackdown began under the late
Prime Minister Andranik Margarian in 2003.
Since his election in 2008, President Sarkisian has made a
“transparent and continuous fight against bribery” an administration
priority. The program, overseen by Prime Minister Tigran Sarkisian,
targets several trouble spots, including education and the judiciary.
At the Nov. 28 congress of the governing Republican Party of Armenia,
President Sarkisian declared that the fight against corruption, among
other “challenges,” was a priority that only a strong party could
handle.
Mass-media outlets are giving increasing coverage to the government’s
anti-corruption initiatives, under which 309 criminal prosecutions for
corruption cases had been launched by October 2009, news media
reported General Prosecutor Aghvan Hovsepian as saying.
The head of the Yerevan office of anti-corruption watchdog
Transparency International, Amalya Kostanian, said she sees progress,
but thinks the government’s fight has been directed solely against
“the lower echelons” of officialdom. Many investigations featured on
television focus on police and low-level officials.
“We know how deeply economic and political links are intertwined,”
said Kostanian. “But if you don’t target the top level, the ministers,
the [parliamentary] deputies, there is no real fight, no political
will that will demonstrate authorities’ willingness to fight against
the bigwigs.”
The Berlin-based watchdog organization recently released a report
saying corruption has increased in Armenia since 2008, in contrast to
neighboring Georgia and Azerbaijan.
Armenia slid 11 slots on Transparency International’s Corruption
Perceptions Index to rank 120th out of 180 countries – alongside
Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Ethiopia and Vietnam. Georgia held on to 66th
place, the highest score in the South Caucasus, while Azerbaijan rose
15 slots to 143rd.
Armenia’s score – 2.7 on a 10-point scale – fell beneath Transparency
International’s 3.0 threshold for systemic corruption. The government
affirms that it will evaluate the results of its 2009-2010 anti-
corruption program by the end of the year.
Many Armenians, however, remain skeptical that Soviet-era habits of
bribery and graft can be easily contained. One pro-opposition human-
rights activist running anti-corruption programs in Armenia’s northern
Lori region contends that the government is focusing only on filing
“criminal cases against some small-fry entities.”
The campaign is not “a real fight,” said Arthur Sakunts, head of the
Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly in Vanadzor.
Some Armenians said new forms of bribery are evolving in order to
outpace government efforts to contain graft. For example, several taxi
drivers in a Yerevan suburb told EurasiaNet that traffic police have
begun hitting them up for bigger “fines” – which the drivers call
bribes – after legislative amendments passed in 2007 prohibited
traffic police from laying in wait for drivers.
“If earlier you could get off by bribing the traffic officer with,
say, 500 dram ($1.20) or 1,000 dram ($2.40), now the bribery rates
have risen five to 10 times, along with the fines,” claimed one
driver, who asked to remain anonymous. “How can you call this an
improvement?”
The head of Yerevan’s Achilles Center for the Protection of Drivers’
Rights, Eduard Hovhannisian, agreed that the legislative amendments
have, “in a way, contributed to an increase in corruption.”
At the same time, he said, drivers are now calling “to try to get
information about their rights and to protect their interests.”
Sociologist Aharon Adibekian, director of the opinion research center
Sociometer, believes that Armenia’s economic doldrums have contributed
to increased corruption.
The country’s Gross Domestic Product declined 17.5 percent in the
first 10 months of 2009, the National Statistics Service announced.
That means that a government official with a low salary cannot “go to
work every day, cleanly shaved and neatly dressed, and not think about
bribery,” Adibekian said.
Eradicating such occurrences will take time, Kostanian said.
Adibekian agreed, saying, “You cannot tackle corruption by finding an
easy prey every now and then and making loud statements.”