“In my opinion, we are taking a very important step and making a decision regarding one of the most important institutions of the state. The logic of such steps perhaps stems from our ideological conviction that the state and the Republic of Armenia can endure only through the presence of its citizens’ will to have a state. That is, the state is founded on the civic will to have a state,” Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on 17 November during the discussion of the question of the universal declaration of citizens at the government’s regular session, adding that this is an institution that is precisely the recording of that will.
In this regard, the Prime Minister recalled the law related to the property tax: “We made a political decision that if a person’s property tax is 100 drams per year, that 100 drams must be paid by the citizen; that 100 drams will certainly not worsen his life and will not give anything to the state budget either, but it will be an expression of the citizen’s will to have a state.”
According to Nikol Pashinyan, this is a more comprehensive decision: “And I am glad that we are making this decision, however it must be well designed. There is no problem in that; the system is being introduced in a phased manner. We must strengthen the political and civic will, which must be expressed also in the growth of state budget revenues, which must be expressed also in transparency, accountability. And this is one of the institutional expressions of the civic will to have a state.”
