Return the People's Money to the People: Arsen Babayan Addresses the National Assembly

Human rights defender Arsen Babayan has made a post on his Facebook page. We present it in full.

Dear National Assembly,

At the next extraordinary or regular session (as soon as you gather), I propose to discuss a much more important issue than the projects aimed at making the community fully controllable through technology.

It is far more important to think about how to help self-isolated individuals so they can emerge from the extremely difficult social conditions caused by the closure of businesses. It is even more vital to consider how to compensate the doctors who have not had a break for dozens of days. Furthermore, how can we ensure that businesses do not go bankrupt?

I hope for such an initiative to be discussed at the next meeting of the NA.

The National Assembly has a budget for travel, representation, and other expenses exceeding one million dollars, which it will hardly be able to use this year. Moreover, this year, it should not be necessary to use it, as we have much more crucial issues within the state than the travel of the deputies.

Gather as soon as possible and decide to direct that one million dollars towards solving the social issues I mentioned above. People might withstand for another week or two, but after that, they will find themselves in an impossible situation. That means that it is urgently necessary to allocate that money, currently dormant in the accounts for travel, representation, and other expenses, to those people.

Another proposal that can be addressed quickly: All deputies of the National Assembly receive an additional 50,000 drams per month, apart from their salaries, for performing their parliamentary duties. This activity involves visits to regions and meetings with voters. However, these meetings and visits cannot take place now, which means that at least 132 families could receive support of 50,000 drams every month until the end of the year, providing much greater assistance to these families than you might imagine.

Dear deputies (especially those from My Step), I understand that for a year now, you have conceptualized overcoming poverty in your minds, but for ordinary people, nothing has changed, and now it has worsened significantly.