Replacing the Term 'Quarantine' with an Arbitrary Positive Word Does Not Change the Essence of the Phenomenon and Situation: BHK MP

"Replacing the term 'quarantine' with an arbitrary positive word does not change the essence of the phenomenon and the situation in any way. This was stated by BHK MP Shake Isayan on her Facebook page. She specifically wrote:

"Welcome to quarantine (that is, state of emergency) Dear citizens,
During today’s extraordinary session of the Parliament, a draft amendment to the law on ensuring the sanitary-epidemiological safety of the population of the Republic of Armenia was discussed. To put it more clearly and specifically, after the end of the state of emergency, a quarantine will be declared at the initiative of the Government, which may be set for a period of up to 6 months and may also be extended if deemed appropriate.

During the state of emergency, we repeatedly raised the issue that its continuous extension is problematic from a legal standpoint and that timely amendments to the law were necessary. However, after so many months, replacing the state of emergency with another regulation should at least be legally clear enough not to create new issues.

The proposed amendment will apply stricter measures, including the same penalties, with 11 types of fines ranging from 10,000 to 500,000 drams. Next, many countries had suspended air communication with Armenia due to the endlessly prolonged state of emergency. Now, by declaring quarantine throughout the territory of Armenia, what message are we sending to the international community?

By the way, quarantine is being declared under conditions where educational institutions are reopening, and we have hospitals that have discharged the last patients infected with COVID and so on. In other words, all branches of public life will successfully function similar to the pre-COVID period, except for air and land communication, which effectively deprives our compatriots working abroad of their livelihoods since international airlines avoid organizing flights to a country where quarantine is imposed.

In declaring such a regime, it is unclear whether neighboring countries will reopen air communication with Armenia, and we are not even talking about active tourism.

Note that the BHK faction had also proposed a provision in the package of proposals that for violating the anti-epidemic rules of quarantine, a warning should first be issued, and only afterward should a fine be imposed, and of course, to lower the limits of the fines, which, unfortunately, was not accepted. It should be noted that thanks to our proposals, the period for appealing measures was set to one month instead of the previous 10 days, and the unconstitutional norm requiring mandatory adherence to WHO instructions was eliminated. At the same time, it was clear that the adoption of these few provisions did not change the essence of the entire legal regulation we expect in the near future, which is why the opposition voted against it.

Postscript: Replacing the term 'quarantine' with an arbitrary positive word does not in any way change the essence of the phenomenon and situation."