The “Armenian Revolutionary Federation” faction proposes to replace the current rating system with open list system. It clarifies the mandate distribution inside the party. “Of course, in all cases, we deal with the proportional order that says that the parties are proportionally represented in the National Assembly, but a question arises whether how the votes are transformed into mandates and distributed. In this regard, the biggest advantage of our proposed model is that the people do this. That is, people not only vote for the party but also tell how the party should distribute its votes”, Armen Rustamyan, Head of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation presented their approach at the discussions over the Electoral Legislation Reforms in Parliament. He is sure that their model also supports the development of parties. He says today there is also an inter-party democracy problem in the Armenian parties. “One of the best ways to solve this problem is to do this with the participation of the people: this is a democracy”, he said. According to the “Armenian Revolutionary Federation” member, the current rating system poses problems connected to quotas. They believe that the quotas themselves are not democratic: “Who has decided that he has the right to present some quotas to the people?”.
“Yelk” faction MP, leader of “Bright Armenia” party Edmon Marukyan reminded about Armenian election experience related to the proportional electoral system. He remembers well that the opposition has always been for proportional system, and in 2015-2016, when the Constitution was changed, the government announced that it had satisfied the opposition’s desire: “However, later a proportional variation was fixed in the Electoral Code, which, as I insisted from the very first moment, would not be of any good for us. I had told in detail what would happen. So it did. The current electoral system, which envisages an election through territorial lists, led to competition between the billionaires and politicians, as a result, politicians got into a difficult situation”.
Meanwhile, according to Edmon Marukyan, today’s government proposes to switch to a 100-percent proportional electoral system, which the opposition has always talked about: “When they say a close list, it is, of course, not close. This is a list made by the political force, which should ensure regional representation during inner discussions. If no one from regions is involved, they will not receive votes from those regions.
Edmon Marukyan is not against the proposal of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation either. He says it is a good option. “We can discuss all the options, but the current electoral system is bad”, he concluded his speech.
The discussion will continue on Friday. The written proposals submitted in advance will be discussed. After this, the consensus decision of the parliamentary forces will be submitted to the relevant government committee as a document.
Nelly GRIGORYAN
