The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) recently held a regular meeting on the democratic institutions of Armenia. PACE demands that Armenia reform its justice system and police, and amend the Electoral Code. A new Electoral Code is going to be adopted next spring, i.e. a year before the next Parliamentary elections. The process of amending the Code has caused heated discussion among Armenian politicians and experts. One matter of debate is the principles of forming electoral commissions. The chairman of the parliamentary committee on state legal affairs, David Arutjunyan, said that the new Code presupposes the forming of electoral commissions by parties. Meanwhile, the chairman of the opposition parliamentary group, Stepan Safaryan, stated that this is only a half-truth, because the chairmen of the district electoral commissions will be appointed by the chairman of the Central Electoral Commission.
Moreover, the opposition has proposed enacting proportional representation voting to the Parliament. The governing party considers this to be unreasonable.
The set of amendments developed by the special working group and the set developed by the opposition are now being considered by experts of the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe.
Susanna Petrosyan. Yerevan. Exclusively to VK
