Even a perfect election code is not a guarantee of perfect elections without necessary will, David Harutyunyan, Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on State and Legal Affairs, told journalists, commenting on reforms of the Armenian Election Code.

The draft is open to for any reasonable proposals irrespective of which political force submits them. During political discussions, the opposition parliamentary forces admitted that more than 55 of its proposals were incorporated in the document, whereas the Armenian Revolutionary Federation Dashnaktsutyun (ARF-D) and the Heritage Party, go on claiming their proposals were ignored. “I say again that numerous interesting proposals were made during the political consultations. I think some of them will be incorporated in the document,” Harutyunyan said. He added that the Armenian National Congress (ANC) did not submit any proposals. However, even after being amended, the election code does not secure against election rigging. “For example, the election code prohibits open vote, but some people practice it in defiance of the law,” Harutyunyan said.

The authors of the draft amendments did their best to consider all the nuances. “We even settled the issue of equally providing billboards to all the political forces,” Harutyunyan said. As regards the ratio between MPs of proportional representation and from single-member constituencies, the present line-up is the best. “It has not yet been proved which of the systems – the single-member or proportional representation one – is better,” he said. Under the circumstances, the present ratio is the best. If we are able to hold better elections using these systems, we can think of applying more complicated systems,” Harutyunyan said.

As to why the ruling party did not hold consultations with the parliamentary Opposition in drafting the amendments, Harutyunyan said: “In that case, such heated debate would have been sparked off at the initial stage that no further discussions would have been possible. And we would not have this draft now.” The draft is most likely to be submitted to Parliament next February, he said.