 armenia slides in global corruption rankings the situation with government corruption in armenia has continued to slowly but steadily deteriorate in the past year according to the latest global survey released by a respected antigraft watchdog on tuesday every year the berlinbased transparency international ti rates countries of the world on a 10point scale with zero indicating an extremely high degree of corruption as perceived by entrepreneurs and experts armenia along with argentina moldova and four other states ranked 109th out of 180 nations covered by transparency international s 2008 corruption perceptions index cpi it was assigned a score of 29 faring slightly worse than it did in the previous cpi released one year ago armenia s score is based on seven corruptionrelated surveys conducted by other organizations including the world bank it had already dropped by 1 point to 30 last year dragging the country down to 99th place in ti s 2007 rankings by contrast ti found a further significant drop in perceived corruption in neighboring georgia giving the latter 39 points and putting it in 67th place georgia was 79th in last year s cpi as always the armenian government and its supporters will draw comfort from the fact that all other nonbaltic former soviet states were again judged to be more corrupt than armenia in particular its archfoe azerbaijan regressed to 158th place in ti s latest rankings ti s armenian affiliate the center for regional development crd portrayed the survey as a further indication of the systemic character of bribery and other corrupt practices that have long plagued the country unfortunately there are very few areas unaffected by corruption the crd chairwoman amalia kostanian told a news conference if corruption is systemic you can not eradicate it in one particular area the administration of former president robert kocharian pledged to combat corruption throughout its decadelong rule that came to an end last spring it launched in 2003 a westernbacked anticorruption program consisting of mainly legislative measures there is little evidence that they have reduced the scale of graft however kocharian s successor and longtime close associate serzh sarkisian admitted in july that the virtual absence of prosecutions of corrupt government officials has undermined public trust in the declared crackdowns on corruption people must see that we are not only talking but also acting sarkisian said in a speech if we talk about corruption all day long and don t show persons engaged in it then our actions will not only produce zero results but will further aggravate the situation his prime minister tigran sarkisian no relation has been even more vocal in acknowledging the seriousness of the problem sarkisian has described graft as the number one problem facing armenia opposition politicians and other government critics dismiss the significance of such statements saying that corruption is one of the pillars of armenia s political system that has allowed kocharian sarkisian and other top officials to stay in power they also say that armenian lawenforcement agencies are themselves too corrupt to tackle the problem in earnest  