Epress.am News from Armenia
In 2010, Armenian authorities proposed to the Venice Commission an electoral code reforms package in the formation of which the opposition had no part. The government attempted to present the package as a joint proposal, said Heritage Party press spokesperson Hovsep Khurshudyan, speaking to journalists in Yerevan today.
“We denied this fact and, along with Dashnaktsutyun [the Armenian Revolutionary Federation], we sent our observations on the electoral reforms to the Venice Commission,” he said.
The Heritage Party representative said, however, they have not yet received a response from the Commission on this matter. “Then a working group was formed, whereupon when we received the invitation to participate in the work of that group, it said there, ‘We invite you to continue the electoral reforms process.’ It wasn’t clear to us what work we had to continue if until then we hadn’t participated in any work. That is, essentially, it was being proposed to us to participate in the amendments process of amendments [sic] made by the government, which is unacceptable for us, when there is a Heritage-Dashnaktsutyun draft project,” he said.
Khurshudyan said that this whole process doesn’t contain the precondition for real reforms in the electoral code: political will. The issue is quite serious, he said, and Armenia’s authorities have to choose whether they want successful elections to take place in a scenario of confrontation and conflict or they want there to be normal, free and transparent elections, which will ensure the public’s trust in the results of those elections. “You yourselves see how great the tension is in the country, both in a social and political sense.”
“Our observations during the last two months have shown that this tension is greater than it’s ever been before,” he said.
Asked by Epress.am what’s the way out of this sociopolitical tension and whether a public riot is possible, Khurshudyan said they wouldn’t want current developments to lead to a confrontation, considering this the worst scenario for the country.
“But the only way to stop this today is in the hands of the government. Only the ruling authorities can display political will and make substantial reforms in the electoral code, and display a reasonable approach in the future, to hold normal, just elections. Perhaps as a result of this, the ruling authorities will gather considerable interest, we don’t know what results there will be a year from now,” he said, adding that continuation of the government’s unreasonable social and economic policy today can lead to such uncontrollable riots that even the opposition won’t be able to manage them.
“People, the masses will find new leaders, those leaders will appear in the streets, and how they’ll manage these processes and what results all this will have, no one knows. That is one of the most dangerous scenarios,” he concluded.