The parliament held a hearing on transformation to full proportional system of elections, which was organized by the NA standing committee on state and legal issues. The issue was raised and proposed by the Heritage and ARF factions and was supported by non-parliamentary opposition powers such as the ANC and Free Democrats parties. During the hearing the opposition brought arguments signifying the importance of full proportional system of elections but the pro-government powers failed to bring and arguments to oppose to the opposition’s initiative. These hearings have proven one more time that the authorities will never agree upon any conditions to return to proportional system of elections. They will not even agree to limit the majoritarian system to some extent. The reason is very simple as the authorities will not be able to reproduce their power and have majority in the parliament without the majoritarian system even if they use the smartest forms of violations. The majoritarian system is saving the authorities as they fill up their list with businessmen, mafia people, who contribute their power during elections. However, during the hearing the representatives of the RPA and PA expressed some hidden intention. They referred to the public opinion and said that the issue could be put out for referendum. This scenario can be dangerous because if the authorities succeed in holding “clean violated elections” during the upcoming parliamentary elections, they may use the same technique to violate the referendum and show that people want to have, for example, not 41 but 61 or more MPs elected under the majoritarian system. By the way, based on the speeches of the PA representatives during this hearing we may assume that again the conflict between the RPA and PA had been resolved. The PA, that has been supporting the initiative of 100% proportional system and created the term “Consensus 1” changed its mind yesterday as the parliament’s vice-speaker Samvel Balasanyan did his best to protect the majoritarian system of elections. However, the issue of transformation to 100% proportional system of elections will be discussed in the parliament. According to the parliament’s laws, opposition factions can propose any issue for discussion during this sitting, even if the majority of the parliament is against it. The Heritage faction will refer to this law and on February 18 will put this issue for discussion in the parliament.
