EU envoy, Armenian official discuss electoral law
Arminfo
25 Jan 05
YEREVAN
The chairman of the Armenian Central Electoral Commission CEC ,
Garegin Azaryan, and the visiting EU special representative for the
South Caucasus, Ambassador Heikki Talvitie, today discussed reforms of
the Armenian Electoral Code.
Garegin Azaryan told the guest that the CEC has already prepared a
package of proposals on reforming the Armenian Electoral Code on 149
pages and if the Armenian National Assembly wants to listen to the
CEC’s opinion, he is ready to inform MPs of the commission’s views,
the press service of the Armenian CEC told an Arminfo correspondent.
Experts of the commission believe that it is necessary to computerize
all the polling stations of the country within a year, which is
already being negotiated with the OSCE. It is also necessary to
retrain members of local and regional electoral commissions, members
of electoral commissions should be appointed not by political parties
but the authorities, and they should include representatives of all
the parliamentary and presidential candidates. This will help avoid
reports of breaches of the rights of proxies and observers during
elections. It is the authorities that organize elections, and
responsibility for their conduct lies with electoral commissions
rather than political parties, proxies and so on, Garegin Azaryan
stressed.
As for the notorious election lists that caused a storm of criticism
in the latest presidential and parliamentary elections in the country,
they were published on the Internet on 2 July 2004, and now any
political party can access them, discuss them with the local
authorities and electoral commissions and make their amendments, the
chairman of the CEC noted.
Heikki Talvitie was also informed that according to the existing
legislation, the Armenian CEC has no right to take part in the
parliamentary discussions of the package of electoral reforms.
Passage omitted: Talvitie met Kocharyan