Stepan Safaryan: Armenian authorities do not intend to introduce considerable amendments to draft Electoral Code

The Armenian authorities do not intend to introduce considerable amendments to the draft Electoral Code, Stepan Safaryan, Chairman of the Armenian Institute for International and Security Affairs, said at a press conference in Yerevan. 

He said that the representatives of the Armenian authorities have repeatedly said that they are not going to yield to the demands of the political and public forces to publish the voters' lists after the voting. "Instead, they have artificially introduced in the agenda a provision limiting the number of observers and journalists at the polling stations in order to remove that provision allegedly under the public pressure," he said.  Safaryan noted that international practice lacks such a concept as "secret participation in elections". He said this concept has been invented by the authorities to avoid publishing the lists after the voting. "If there were such a restriction, it would apply to all citizens and neither proxies nor observers would have access to those lists", he stressed. Safaryan added that preferential voting is also a cunning trick of the draft document authors. "Under the guise of preferential voting, they want to preserve the first-past-the-post system, which allows oligarchs and other people having nothing to do with politics to obtain parliamentary seats. 

For his part, Shirak Torosyan, lawmaker from the ruling Republican Party of Armenia, said that the document has no final version yet and that it will be amended based on the proposals of the civil society and political forces. At the same time, he stressed that no provision about publication of the voters' lists after the voting can be included in the draft Electoral Code. He added that the preferential voting will facilitate the citizens' task. "Each constituency will have a list of candidates. The voters will know whom to vote for and who will represent their interests in the Parliament", he said. As regards the limited number of journalists and observers at the polling stations, Torosyan said that the relevant provision can be revised.