The night voting will be substantially prevented

This was the last compromise made by the government to the parliamentary opposition regarding the Election Code.

 With 76 votes in favor, the NA adopted the Election Code at the second reading yesterday. 12 MPs were against, Tigran Torosyan, Vardan Khachatryan and the ARF faction MPs. The main reporter Davit Harutyunyan stated before the voting on the bill that they accepted another proposal made by the opposition, “At the summarizing round of the voting, when the signatures in the register are being counted, recorded and information about that is sent by all possible means of communication to the CEC (Central Electoral Commission), we have stated here that an excerpt from the register can be given to a trustee on his/her demand regarding the number of voters participated in the election, validated by the signatures of the head and the secretary of the commission and the seal of the commission. This is from us for the opposition.” Armen Rustamyan and Vahan Hovhannisyan were giving signs of approval from their seats. “We perceive this as a serious step forward, a success. We regard this as a result of our struggle and your open-mindedness”, stated the ARF faction leader. Armen Rustamyan later clarified for “Aravot” why they value the adoption of this proposal so much, “Considering the past experience the same process has taken place all the time; the elections would end, they would report the preliminary numbers two hours after the elections, but after summarizing we would get completely different picture of participants. The number of participants could differ in thousands. You may check out what number the CEC stated at 10 pm and what summarizing number it gave at 2 pm the next day. Our task was that it was prevented, and the number originally stated was recorded and it was not changed. And in order to supervise that we have to get a valid document that at 10pm a number is stated and when another number is stated we will be able to appeal that afterwards presenting respective documents. This can substantially decrease the cases of night voting.”

Vahan Havhannisyan once again stated during our conversation that they were pleased that this one of their four most important proposals had been partially adopted, “But it does not mean that we were so pleased that we would have voted in favor.” And as a response to the question whether he thinks possible that with the mechanisms stipulated by the code it will be possible to decrease the election riggings, he said, “These are cosmetic amendments. I do not even want to use the “amendment” word. In any changes, there are stronger and weaker ones. One can consider only the one that was accepted at the end to be the only strong one in the positive sense of the word in those changes and also the one regarding the issue that it is mandatory and obligatory that the opposition must be present when the identification recordings of the citizens are made.”

The Heritage Party that had declared “a participating policy” from the beginning did not participate in the discussions of this important law after all. However, at the speech time the faction MP Armen Martirosyan expressed his assessment that the changes made “do not solve any problem. They make wide and superficial changes, but the underlying problems are not solved after all. Despite all the calls made by the NGOs and oppositional parties, the authorities did not have the political good will, and if it had had it, the opposition offers would have been accepted. No offers of the Heritage Party that would have made the elections more transparent and fair took place in this bill turning it into an imitation of change. The violations that took place at the previous elections retained the possibility to repeat.”