A1+
`THE THRESHOLD MUST BE LOWERED’
[04:22 pm] 07 April, 2006
The Ramkavar-Azatakan and the Powerful Homeland
Parties were concerned by the draft Electoral Code
which was sent to the Venice Commission by the NA.
Today they organized a discussion of the Electoral
Code.
According to them, the reforms offered in the
Electoral Code can aggravate the atmosphere of
non-confidence and intolerance. According to the RA
present Electoral Code, the mandates meant for the NA
proportional elections are distributed to those
parties and blocs who had at least 5% and 7% of votes
respectively.
According to the new draft, the threshold for one
party participating in the Parliamentary elections 5%,
for the alliance of two parties – 7%, and for that of
three or more parties – 10%. Member of the
Ramkavar-Azatakan party Haroutyun Araqelyan announced
that it is meaningless to establish threshold as we do
not have the definition of the «political alliance».
According to Shirak Torosyan, member of the Central
Administration of the Powerful Homeland party, the
draft creates more favorable conditions for the
alliances of three or more parties as they must gather
twice as less votes as separate parties. «Factually
the parties are forced to form alliances, and very
often that is done mechanically without taking into
account ideological differences».
The Powerful Homeland offers to make the threshold
lower for both the separate parties and the alliances.