Civic Demand
00:00, April 11, 2011 | Discussions | Electoral Rights
”Partnership for Open Society” Initiative, which unites over 60 member organizations, held a discussion on “Amendments to RA Electoral Code: New Guarantees for Free and Fair Elections” with the participants of representatives from the National Assembly, international organizations, the civil society and the mass media.
Do the amendments improve the election code and enable conducting better elections? These are the key issues brought up during the discussion.
The main weaknesses such as voters’ registers and electoral commissions were identified during the discussions on Electoral Code, organized by IFES in partnership with the National Assembly in November 2010, however they are not discussed in the current election code bill by the National Assembly Commission of State and Legal Affairs.
According to the latest UN Human Development report data, about 1.2 million Armenians have migrated from Armenia which means that 800,000 voters are living outside Armenia. However, the names of these voters are still included in the voters’ registers in all the elections.
According to the existing procedures, the RA Police Visa and Passport Department can eliminate the names of these people from the voters’ registers only in case a voter submits a request or notifies about change of permanent address. The danger is that these entries can serve for multiple voting.
The participants of the discussion expressed concerns and made proposals hoping they will be incorporated in the new election code draft law.
The representatives of the parliamentary opposition, the Heritage Party and the ARF Dashnaktsutyun, said they have no expectations from the amendments to the election code and the key proposals made by the opposition have not been considered in it.
Vahan Hovanisyan, leader of the ARF Dashnaktsutyun party, thinks the weakness of the bill is the new procedure of forming electoral commissions. “We propose to balance the number of representatives from the government and the opposition in the commissions, but the NA rejected the ARF proposals.
Arthur Sakunts, the head of the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly Vanadzor office believes that laws in Armenia are not effective and the amendments to the election code will have no impact on the situation in Armenia. Arthur Sakunts proposes to start a civil movement to impact the electoral processes through strengthening civil control. The civic demand implies inclusion of new forces and fight against election frauds through civil movement from the geographical perspective.
“We must not allow the suffrage to be viewed as a voting movement in favor of one candidate or another. The purpose of the civil movement must be the demand for free and fair elections,” states the human rights activist.