Aren't You Tired of Arresting Guards, Babysitters, Nurses, and Locksmiths? - Elinar Vardanyan

Elinar Vardanyan, a member of the Alternative Projects group, posted on her social media page:

"Aren't you tired of arresting guards, babysitters, nurses, and locksmiths? The police issued a statement yesterday regarding operational-investigative measures taken to uncover previously committed corruption-related crimes. They revealed that the director of the primary school No. 1 in Garni community had committed abuses, appointing her husband as the school’s electrician-locksmith, guard, and janitor from 2004 to 2017 consecutively. Her husband never actually came to work, while the total salary issued under his name, amounting to 3,949,000 drams, was embezzled.

This is the crime of the century! Is this the fight against corruption... Well, should someone in that school change electrical wires from time to time, or repair broken doors and windows, or did the students repair the broken items themselves? What serious crime is this? As if we didn’t know that the same problem existed in every second establishment. Don’t you want to understand the reasons? The same reasons that exist today. In the conditions created by the systems, people have to worry about their daily bread. Aren't you tired of arresting guards, babysitters, nurses, and locksmiths, especially since those doing the arrests are not angels? Over the course of 13 years, almost 4 million drams have been embezzled. Really? And is it more moral that revolutionary figures who have worked for a few months in our state bodies receive such amounts in bonuses? They justified the bonuses by saying it’s just 50,000 drams over the year. Now, divide the amount embezzled by the electrician by 13 years.

Your continuous festive celebrations are worth much more. Please do not point out to me the principle of equality before the law. By that principle, are the employees of the educational system and state bodies who are receiving bonuses of several millions rewarded? To receive such amounts in the educational system, one would need to accumulate several years' worth of salary. Doesn’t the police have anything else to do?

In today's conditions of increasing crime, when even provincial administrations are being looted, the law enforcement bodies are focused on such cases. And again, I ask you not to refer me to the legal regulations; I know them well. There is simply a delicate boundary between legality and morality, and crossing it brings no good results. We cannot go everywhere, seeing crime and corruption in every village, school, kindergarten, and everywhere. Do you envision the end of this? The country will collapse..."