The Bright Armenia Party (BAP), as part of its election campaign for the June 7 parliamentary elections, on Tuesday held a protest outside the Compulsory Enforcement Service (CES) building to draw public attention to the massive violations that are being committed by this structure.

BAP chairman Edmon Marukyan urged people to visit the seized property auction website and personally see the scale of the situation. “People don’t even know that a block has been put on their house or car because of an unpaid sum of only 5,000 drams. The lack of real justice continues precisely through this structure,” Marukyan noted.

He particularly emphasized the fact that CES blocks accounts instantly, but the process of removing it can take months.

“A person [in Armenia] has become just a ‘subject of fines,’ and there is no state that will protect him,” Marukyan stated, recalling how former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili had managed to abolish the system of road inspectors in Georgia in one day.

According to him, the situation in Armenia has reached the point that fines are already envisaged as a separate revenue item in the country’s state budget.

“Haven’t you been able to carry out reforms for 8 years? You are fining a person for crossing a crooked line,” Marukyan said, addressing the incumbent Armenian authorities.

Also, Marukyan raised a rhetorical question: is the person for the state, or the state for the person?

“The system [in Armenia] has become a monster for citizens. This is a misanthropic system,” the politician declared.

Unexpectedly, justice minister Srbuhi Galyan appeared near the CES building, and a heated debate broke out between her and Marukyan. The minister believes that the cases mentioned by Marukyan do not correspond to reality, the system works well, and the peoples’ dissatisfaction is explained by the very fact of confiscation or payment of a fine. She added that the rights of the state should also be protected from some very dear, but ignorant people.