Epress.am News from Armenia
Heritage Party parliamentary faction member Armen Martirosyan considered last week’s discussions on Armenia’s Electoral Code to be substantial.
The MP isolated two issues from those discussed: publicizing electoral lists and the mechanism of recalling members of committees.
“After one, two Q & A’s on the recall mechanism, they accepted the existence of this problem and that there has to be a mechanism for recall,” he said.
Opponents to publicizing lists, according to Martirosyan, spoke of vendettas, especially in village areas. “It’s clear that the individual who is raising such an issue definitely lives a few hundred kilometers from the village because he doesn’t know that villages, by law, are very closed collectives and everyone knows who goes and who doesn’t go [to the polling booths] and approximately who will vote for who.”
The issue is not about who from Armenia’s citizens will go to the polling stations and who won’t, but that who from those who cannot be found and those who have died go to vote, implying violations when such names appear as voters at certain polling stations.
“I also consider important women’s participation. We see today that even the 10% scale provided by law in the lists is not maintained and in political parties with huge factions, only one, two women are parliamentarians,” said the Heritage Party member, who considered this fact “an appropriate expression of a non-democratic country, considering that more than half of our population are women and having such a resource, we are not using it effectively.”
“The suggestion is to define women’s presence within the limits of 30%; moreover, establish that in the case of a female candidate leaving, again it must be a woman [to take her position],” said Martirosyan. if there are no female candidates in the electoral list, only then, according to order, can a man take her place, concluded the MP.