Hovhannes Sahakyan: Armenian authorities ready to discuss proposals on Electoral Code

 The Armenian authorities are ready to discuss all the proposals of the political and public forces regarding the draft amendments to the Electoral Code, Hovhannes Sahakyan, Head of the Armenian Standing Parliamentary Committee on State and Legal Affairs, said at today's press conference in Yerevan on March 4.     

He said that all the stakeholders will be able to take part in the upcoming discussions and to make their proposals. He added that the Venice Commission's consideration of the draft Electoral Code before the debates in Armenia does not run counter to the law. "The Venice Commission does not assess the document itself or its compliance with the legislation and the Constitution of the country but the compliance of its certain provisions with the European standards," he said.  

For his part, Deputy Head of the Heritage Party Armen Martirosyan said that such an approach of the authorities is unacceptable, because the Venice Commission's positive assessment will give an additional impetus to the manipulations by the Republican Party of Armenia. "They will refuse to accept the opposition's proposals, saying that the Venice Commission has already positively assessed the provisions included in the draft Electoral Code," he said. He stressed that the current Electoral Code can also be positively assessed by the Venice Commission, but in the reality it contained a lot of loopholes for fraud.          

To note, on March 3, the Armenian Government approved the new draft Electoral Code. When presenting the draft Code, Head of the Government Administration, Minister David Harutyunyan said that that the active debates on the new draft Electoral Code are expected to start during the upcoming four-day session of the Parliament (March 14-17) and will last till June 1. 

According to the new Electoral Code of Armenia there will be 13 electoral districts instead of 41. The minimum number of Deputies of the National Assembly shall be 101.  According o the draft, the specialist shall take the identification document of the elector, insert it in a technical device verifying the identity of electors.  If an elector has submitted an identification card or a biometric passport, has been registered in the list of electors of the given precinct and has not participated in the voting up to that moment with any identification document, the image of that elector shall appear on the screen and a green light shall flash on the screen.  Where the elector has already participated in the voting with any of his or her identification document, a red light shall flash on the screen. In this case, as well as in the case when the person has presented the identification document of another person, the chairperson of the commission shall invite police officers to the electoral precinct who undertake measures prescribed by law.  In case voting on the head of community and voting on the member of the council of elders are held simultaneously, individual envelopes for each voting shall be made in such a way that they clearly differ from each other by colours and match the colours of the respective ballot papers.