Republican Party of Armenia Offers Own Solution to Inter-Party Cooperation

The idea of establishing an Inter-Party Center for Public Oversight of the Elections is itself a good one, but it pains me that due to indecorous preparations the declaration was signed by only 4 of the 9 political parties participating in the parliamentary election, Republican Party of Armenia (HHK) Executive Body member, HHK MP David Harutyunyan said in a statement issued Thursday and referring to the declaration signed Wednesday by the Armenian National Congress, Heritage Party, Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) and the Prosperous Armenia Party.

“Let’s behave differently for once. Let us all stand back to back in the issue of holding good elections and carry out such elections. Let’s not turn this important process into a PR campaign, but really engage everyone, agree on all issues with one package, and agree on the methods of publicly overseeing the elections, on the code of ethics for each of us during the elections, on mutual respect and on the provision of fair competition. Let’s agree and implement them together — with all 8 parties and 1 alliance. This is the path to real democracy. Creating a Center is only one of the methods that will allow us to discuss all the issues raised in an atmosphere of mutual respect. Understanding this mandate, I, on behalf of our party, suggest all direct participants of the electoral process discuss the draft of rules we developed so that tomorrow and immediately we will undertake the task of completing these rules,” he said.

The draft document proposed by Harutyunyan includes 10 rules to “ensure civilized competition among election candidates and with the aim of properly holding the elections.” The 10 rules begin by defining who “participants of the electoral process” are; and include stipulations for how campaigning should be carried out; how to work with election commissions, observers and proxies; how to speak and carry one’s self; not to abuse one’s authority; not to engage in “political corruption” (i.e. obliging another to refuse or accept candidacy, or obliging constituents to vote for a party or candidate); to engage in dialogue and have direct contact with other participants; to report electoral code violations; and accept the final voting results, among others.