Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan participated in the session of the Police Board on the occasion of Police Day. Prior to the session, Nikol Pashinyan laid flowers on the plaque placed in the courtyard of the Police building and paid tribute to the memory of all the police officers who sacrificed their lives for the sake of the Motherland. During the tour, the Head of the Government got acquainted with the new vehicles of the Police, including the electric ones.
The Prime Minister made a speech at the Board session, in which he said,
“Dear Minister of Internal Affairs,
Deputy Ministers,
Dear attendees,
Spiritual fathers,
Dear police officers,
First of all, I want to congratulate everyone on Police Day and thank each and every one of you for your service, because the Police is the institution that is the backbone of the state, and the backbone of the state must become stronger every day. We have talked about this a lot. At the moment, the Police and the system of Internal Affairs in general are in the process of major transformations. I want to emphasize the main purpose and meaning of these changes. The key aim and purpose is to set new, high and continuously rising standards for Police work, and I want to highlight three directions on this path.
The first is the continuous development of professional skills and the conviction that no police officer can be below a certain bar in his professional, intellectual skills. Today we mark the Police Day, that’s why we emphasize it, and, in fact, the same applies to the Rescue Service and the whole system in general.
The second part, I want to emphasize, is the system of social guarantees. We have to understand that being a police officer and thinking, say, for example, how will I pay my child’s education fees or if my child gets sick, my family member gets sick, what am I going to do – this is nonsense, this is a situation contradicting the state interest. There can be no such thing if we want to have a state. We are not talking now about the person who, because of his situation, has constantly thought and thinks about it. In other words, I want to say that we are thinking about this or making changes in this direction, not in the name of love for the Police or the Rescue Service or other defense and security agencies, but, first of all, in the name of love for other citizens, because you all ensure law and order, protect law and order of the state.
Therefore, if we want to have security, our primary concern should be to ensure that you remain focused on security in your work and not on all sorts of domestic problems that are common to everyone and constantly distract you from your work and force to have other agendas during work and during working hours. This is where we want to solve these two issues. The first is to guarantee our citizens that anyone wearing our police uniform meets certain professional standards, and to create social guarantees for employees of the Police, Rescue Service, Ministry of the Interior, so that they are convinced that working there already means a certain social minimum below which these guarantees cannot drop. This is why we are starting the voluntary certification process.
I want to emphasize that during this time, especially when talking about the Police, we should not forget one thing, that the Police is a law enforcment structure. The Police must have the professional skills to use force, not as an end in itself, but as necessary. But it must be done in the interest of public safety, for the sake of public safety and not the opposite, and the actions must be legal. This is very important. This is important for both the police officer and the citizen so that it is predictable for the citizen what the consequences or results may be for a particular action. Because there can be a case of use of force, for which the policeman can be encouraged, rewarded, we thank him for that, but there are cases when, on the contrary, liability can follow, for that it is very important for the policemen as well.
I want to talk about the terms of service. I, if I’m not mistaken, to be honest, I didn’t check the numbers, maybe we can also check, but intuitively, in the history of the Third Republic, there has never been as much state investments in the Police system as they are today. This is another attitude towards both the public and the Police. I remember when we were planning to establish the Patrol Police, there was a discussion about how we would provide the technical means. there were all sorts of financial and resource limitations. For me, the problem was unequivocal: there should not be any used car, technical means in the establishment of new services. This is our attitude to the Police and the public, because after providing the other conditions, we must provide proper working conditions, because a person can be professional, knowledgeable, but if he does not have the proper technical means, he is not provided with the proper means, being professional and honest, being knowledgeable and dedicated, he may just produce a completely different result.
In this sense, I think that we have reached a very important place, we are at a very important turning point and crossroads. Of course, for us, the development of the Police is a matter of state development. We cannot say that you know what, we do not have the necessary social and technical means to ensure working conditions, because that would mean giving up the goal of having a sovereign state, and we will never give up on that. And I want us to stay focused on this issue, because especially the law enforcment agencies, the state structures should not forget for a second what our goal is. Our goal is to strengthen and reinforce our independence, sovereignty, to increase the competitiveness of our state, to strengthen the international reputation of our country.
Today, compared to 2019, we have a 35 percent growth in the field of tourism according to the data of the first quarter, which brings great resources to the Republic of Armenia. It depends also on the work of the Police whether those people will encourage others to come to the Republic of Armenia or, on the contrary, they will say that it is better to choose another place and go somewhere else. These are interconnected, we are talking about billions of dollars that will either flow into Armenia or flow out of the Republic of Armenia as a result of your work. Thank God, today, at least in the field of economy, economic growth, we are doing good job, and I want to believe, I believe and I am convinced that it is also thanks to your work. Because, as we have agreed, we are doing everything to create equal conditions, equal opportunities, to create conditions for everyonen being equal before the law, the supremacy of the law. Of course, we have not reached the idealness, but we must work in that direction every day.
Dear police officers,
Once again, I congratulate all of you and each of you on Police Day and thank you for your service.”
With the mediation of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia and the decree of the President of the Republic of Armenia, on the occasion of the Police Day, a group of employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Armenia were awarded state awards for their courage and dedication during their service, for their contribution to the protection of law and order. The Prime Minister congratulated them and awarded them with the medal “For excellent preservation of public order”.
