The National Assembly was discussing for 3 days the bills by coalition factions and parliamentary opposition “Dashnaktsutyun” and “Heritage” regarding amendments to the Electoral Code. The new Electoral Code of the coalition and the amendments to the current law proposed by the opposition will be discussed today. More likely, the first one will be approved; the second one will be rejected. In this case, the unusual thing was that by the suggestion of Davit Harutyunyan the standing committee on judicial and legal affairs recognized these bills as alternative and gave a positive conclusion for the discussion of the both. Both parties state that their initiatives are directed to the possible minimization of electoral violations; however the parties, especially coalition factions are not inclined to admit the suggestions of the opposition for the mentioned purpose. Why is the government so intolerant to the opposition and its suggestions? We tried to find it out from the Minister of Justice Hrayr Tovmasyan, who participates in the discussion of the bills.
– Is it possible that the Electoral Code presented by the government and the bill by the opposition will be united and an interim version will be adopted? Is the government willing to admit at least some if not all the suggestions of the opposition?
– I am not currently able to speak on behalf of the whole government; it is a political process, which is conducted in the parliament. The authors of the bills will have to discuss that and if there appears to be a common version, the government will express its position additionally. That’s why both of them are alternative bills and the authors can discuss and make a common one out of them. However it must be taken into account that the bill presented by the coalition is a complete one and the bill presented by the opposition is only an amendment.
– The decision of the government on the mentioned bill of the opposition was negative. What do you think as a Minister and a former representative of the civil society: why the government does not ever try to approve the bills and suggestions presented by the opposition, even when it is not principally against them. Why doesn’t it make any compromises?
– In this sphere it is most difficult to make any compromises, since most of the questions are pure political and do not have any legal solutions and it is practically impossible to convince anybody. If in other cases, when one can say that it contradicts to the Constitution or international responsibilities, etc, it is possible to find common grounds. And, for example, in case of proportional and majoritarian elections, about which the government and opposition argue, it is very difficult to find such grounds, for the weak ones proportional elections are more profitable. Both of them have their advantages and disadvantages.
– Can we replace the notions powerful and weak by parliamentary and opposition parties, since it is the opposition that makes a suggestion to pass to the proportional elections for 100 per cent, which is not acceptable for the government.
– You can give names, but it is the current situation. But if a powerful party comes up, which is not represented in the parliament, it will give priority to proportional elections. The votes of the small parties are abolished by majoritarian elections and consequently they are not represented. But if they exist all over the Republic, it is possible to collect the votes and represent. When a party appeared at a certain stage which was powerful, but not represented in the parliament, majoritarian elections were advantageous for it and as experience shows, they received considerable number of votes in majoritarian elections. It concerns the “Prosperous Armenia” party. That’s why it is hard to find common grounds here. I don’t want to oppose these two bills. I think that both of them are aimed at solving the existent problems in RA electoral system. Simply evaluation of and the ways to solve these problems are a bit different. The version of coalition is for double vote. The authors of the other bill find it not satisfactory. But the government will be against all the formations, which may primarily have good intentions, but may contain little mines. And at the completion of electoral processes or at some stage, it will be possible to blow them up for political purposes, which may have an irrational role on the whole electoral process.
– The government always speaks about its willingness to conduct elections without any violations. In this case why don’t you at least accept suggestions of the opposition aimed at restricting the opportunities to make electoral violations?
– According to the coalition the voters’ list must be published 20 days, 10 days or 2 days in advance to make sure that dead people are not included in them. According to the government, restriction to electoral violations is the equal representation among the heads of electoral committees, the physical existence of the party poll-watchers, distribution of equal airing hours the opposition finds all these not satisfactory. This is a problem of evaluation.
– In case of absence of political will of the government to conduct fair elections and not to make electoral violations, does this bill give a chance to restrict the opportunities to make violations in comparison with the previous one? Or it is possible to make violations in spite of any kind of bill.
– Any constitutional initiative gives this opportunity. If we speak about election bribe as a kind of electoral violation, it does not have to do with the current bill. It is in the competence of the police, prosecutor’s and court. There exist electoral art and traditions etc as well. Sometimes people think that no matter if they go to elections or not, it will not have considerable influence on election results. And if being led by such logics, the majority of the population does not go to elections and there is no electoral violation during elections, anyway these elections cannot be considered as democratic as well.
– According to the bill of the coalition, only the local electoral committees are formed by the party members. Do you agree with the opinions that electoral violations take place mainly at polling stations and by this step the government leaves the responsibility of electoral violations on parties, and does not regard this issue on the state level?
– If the government did the opposite, I assure that representatives of the opposition would say that it is a common knowledge that electoral violations take place at polling stations, that’s why they took it into their hands. But when the member votes at Central Electoral Committee and he is asked, why he votes in this way or another, he replies that it is the party, that decided so. It is not normal, at least for me. CEC must really be an independent body. However ideal solutions do not exist anyway.