As the official start of the pre-election campaign for next month’s presidential election in Armenia draws closer, the first signs of a real political competition are starting to emerge. Yesterday, the first president of the Republic of Armenia, Levon Ter Petrosian, unveiled his campaign manifesto and while it has hardly set the world alight, some supportive of the former head of state are already offering their opinion on it. Nazarian is one of them.

There are quite a few ideas that I like;

- the elimination of certain taxes,

- eliminating the practice of taxing income before the revenues occur (this is an extremely stupid practice that the current administration uses),

- eliminating the state racket of collecting bribes and encouraging tax evasion (basically, the money flows into the pockets of the beaurocrats instead of the state coffers which necesitates taxation before revenue),

- expanding the duties and responsibilities of the CB board of directors to balance the CB chairman’s clout,

- providing harvest insurance mechanisms to the farmers (another excellent idea),

- eliminating capital investment taxation (taxing investments is really stupid if you want to encourage investments),

- enforce anti-trust laws to reduce monopolization of economic spheres that are not natural monopolies. This should encourage competition, add consumer surplus (consumers will get more value for their money), raise productivity and competitiveness in the global markets.

There are quite a few other good ideas, and some of my major concerns are addressed in the law and order section of the program.

The full post is available on the Armenia Election Monitor 2008.