YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 26, NOYAN TAPAN. "It does not matter if the gas tariff rise calculations are correct or not. The important thing is that the ordinary citizen is defenseless, the principle of social justice has been violated and the social burden is becoming unbearable for him," RA Ombudsman Armen Harutyunian said at the February 25 press conference. In his words, eventualy the matter concerns the problem of monopolies: there are no market relations, but there are unnatural monopolies which conflict with the Constitution and, in fact, they are destroying small and medium entrepreneurship. The ombudsman underlined that he began receiving numerous complaints from medium entrepreneurs who say that big business has created such conditions that it is impossible to work. "People are not given the opportunity to carry out normal entrepreneurial activity so that they could earn money and in that case the social burden would not be so heavy," A. Harutyunian said. He called on the government to develop a social package for vulnerable sections of the population - in case of a rise in the gas price. As regards the amendment, which was made in 2009 to the RA Law on Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues and under which a citizen shall be informed that his (her) organs can be used without his (her) permission so the citizen must state in written form beforehand that he (she) forbids his (her) organs from being used, A. Harutyunian called it not only an anticonstitutional, but also a ridiculous law. "The Constitution is increasingly losing touch with our reality," A. Harutyunian noted, adding: "If things continue in the same way, in 15-20 years we can speak about the reservation of Armenia rather than the Republic of Armenia, and about the internal rules of the reservation of Armenia rather than about the Constitution of the Republic of Armenia". He said that the state bodies should think of measures to stop all this because "society cannot be composed of persons having only rights and those having only obligations".

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