The first week of discussion of the draft Electoral Code shows that the government is strongly against the three things. 1/ To publish the voters’ list. Sometimes the decision of the Constitutional Court is cited, according to which the non-publication of the lists is not contrary to the Basic Law. In other words, the lists may not be published. However, the Constitutional Court has not accepted a decision that the publication of the lists is contrary to the Constitution. I think that no need to be a big lawyer to understand it.
2/ The government refuses to attribute an obligation on the CEC for having web-cameras in all polling stations and the voting and counting process be broadcast live on the Internet. They say, take photos as much as you want. But firstly, the journalists’ and observers’ taking photos may be interrupted at any time by the Chairman of the Commission or by its members and also by wandering election fraud raiders. Secondly, these footages are a right, while what the opposition suggests should be an obligation by the state to rebuke the same raiders and the video recordings would have an evidence-based force at the courts.
3/ The most important thing that the government refuses to do is to pass truly proportional elections where only the names of the first three people would be mentioned in the party list and the list would be general for the whole country. In the case of great and multi-national states and federal structure, the approach that is proposed in the draft, i.e. a separate list for each constituency, is perhaps justified. In the case of a small and mono-ethnic country, it is senseless. My as a resident of Kotayk region “national” problems are not fundamentally different from the problems of a resident of Aragatsotn marz or the one of the Yerevan. From the perspective of the supreme legislative body, they mainly coincide. Certainly, we also have unique problems that must be solved by the local government bodies. The suspicions of the opposition that the aim of the proposed draft is to ensure 51 mandate to the number of oligarchs’, officials’ and mobsters’ team, I think, is well-founded.
Pertaining to other issues, the government is ready to make concessions. Then, what is the problem of the opposition? In my opinion, to focus on these three problems. Not to come up with 6, 16 or 46 offers. Not to be engaged in a political dissipation of time, not to fall into the arms of lyrical effusions and orient the society around these three points. But I am sure that the opposition parties and different social structures are going to talk about this thousand and one issues in these two and a half months and will give such “concerts” that the quartet of Krilov’s parable will seem an embodiment of harmony on this background.
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Aram ABRAHAMYAN
