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| 11:17:53 | 18-06-2005 | Politics |

NO POLITICAL WILL

June 20 the amendments to the Electoral Code will come into force

“Let the authorities not to connect the conduction of fair and
transparent elections with the clauses of the Electoral Code. They just
want to secure a basis for further lawless actions”, secretary of the
National Unity faction Alexan Karapetyan says. He considers that the
new Electoral Code showed regress as compared to the previous one. In
his opinion, taking into account the circumstance that the election
process will be controlled by the powers with rich experience of
falsifying the outcomes, the next elections will be much more worse.

Among the shortcomings of the EC Alexan Karapetyan marked the order
of formation of the election commissions. “Judges are included
in the commissions. How is the juridical power connected with the
conduction of elections?” he says. He also noted one more omission:
the Electoral Code does not regulate the issue of the participation
or non-participation of judges serving on the election commission
in the court proceedings. Alexan Karapetyan is convinced that the
amendments have not changed anything, since de facto judges are
appointed by the President.

Justice faction secretary Victor Dallakyan who is a co-author of
the previous Electoral Code, noted, “As a matter of fact the Code
was not improved. It can be proved by two ordinary examples – first,
the process of formation of the commissions offers the authorities the
possibility of large-scale falsifications and second, though there is
some progress as regards the empowered persons, the Central Election
Committee have exceed power of regulating the rights of the empowered
persons and observers.

Reminding that the Electoral Code is an essential but sufficient
condition for the conduction of democratic elections People’s Deputy
faction member Mkrtich Minasyan noted, “The new Electoral Code is not
perfect, however it contains some advantages.” For example, its authors
tried to settle the problems such as the expansion of authority of the
observers and empowered persons, responsibility for filing the rolls as
well as prolongation of the election campaign period. Diana Markosyan