TRANSPARENCY INTERNATIONAL DISCOVERS IMPERFECTION OF LEGISLATION
Panorama.am
20:13 31/05/2007
The monitoring of abuse of administrative resources and pre-electoral
propagation carried out by "Transparency International – Armenia"
NGO discovered a number of shortcomings regarding imperfection of
electoral legislation. Reminding the numerously mentioned uncertainty
of voters’ lists, NGO representatives informed about the discovered
shortcomings. The organization vice-chairman Varuzhan Hoktanyan
asserts, that one of the electoral legislation’s drawbacks is the fact
that "it doesn’t specify what pre-electoral campaign is". As a result,
all the actions carried out before the start of official propaganda
are not considered as propaganda.
Another shortcoming is that the law doesn’t regulate the process of the
third person bearing expenses for a party. It gives a party supporter
possibility to finance the party campaign avoiding the campaign fund.
An interesting example concerns "Prosperous Armenia" party, numerous
pre-electoral events of which were sponsored by a charity fund owned
by the party chairman Gagik Tsarukyan.
"Transparency International – Armenia" also points another
shortcoming also regarding party activity in the period of
official propaganda. Armenian legislation doesn’t regulate the
propaganda financing in the period before the beginning of official
campaign. Through that parties have possibility to finance their
propaganda before its official start and then just don’t declare it.
These drawbacks give the parties opportunity to justify the illegal
over-expenses made for propaganda.
Shortcomings are also discovered in the fields of law application. It
mostly concerns propagandizing of a party by persons holding high
political or ideological positions.