{"id":152925,"date":"2012-01-11T16:56:59","date_gmt":"2012-01-11T12:56:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/?p=152925"},"modified":"2012-01-11T17:07:50","modified_gmt":"2012-01-11T13:07:50","slug":"armenian-mps-debate-pros-and-cons-of-majority-vs-proportional-representation-voting-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2012\/01\/11\/armenian-mps-debate-pros-and-cons-of-majority-vs-proportional-representation-voting-system.html","title":{"rendered":"Armenian MPs Debate Pros and Cons of Majority vs. Proportional Representation Voting System"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The majority electoral system is a suitable mechanism for election fraud; the Free Democrats party was always in support of proportional representation, said party representative and Armenia&#8217;s former foreign minister Alexander Arzumanyan (pictured).<\/p>\n<p>However, according to Republican Party of Armenia MP <span style=\"color: #000080;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/parliament.am\/deputies.php?sel=details&amp;ID=947&amp;lang=eng\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong>Artak Davtyan<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/span>, proportional representation has its shortcomings \u2014 for instance, the views of political parties are not taken into account.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;First, it forms fairly weak governments. For example, in Italy, in a very brief period of time, proportional representation resulted in a change of 52 governments. Second is the very weak connection between the MP or candidate and voter. Third, it&#8217;s the rather low level according to district representation, and the most important drawback, in my opinion, is when the move to a 100% proportional voting system is finally made, it leads to certain partisan phenomena \u2014 parties view their role in the state governing system above the functions of the state.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The MP asserts that the mixed electoral system that was called to eliminate the drawbacks of the majority and proportional systems also doesn&#8217;t fully serve its purpose.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In my opinion, the most acceptable is the relative majority electoral system which works in 43 countries in the world, including the US, Great Britain, Canada and so on,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Alexander Arzumanyan, however, countered that the press conference is turning into a theoretical seminar, noting that he too could speak of general abstract systems, but the goal of today&#8217;s press conference is to speak of Armenia today, about what needs to be done now.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In developing countries like Armenia the government&#8217;s only purpose is to be re-elected, through rigging elections, putting to work the entire mechanism of election fraud. One of these is the majority electoral system. Let&#8217;s accept that the opposition has achieved a landslide victory in the elections and received 70% of the votes (with our system this amounts to 63 places), while the current authorities get 27 places. Added to this 27 are the 41 oligarchs elected through the majority system; as a result, the ruling authorities get the vast majority of votes and consequently, election victory is ruled out. The same picture also happens in reverse,&#8221; Arzumanyan insisted.<\/p>\n<p>The former foreign minister is convinced that since parties are unable to establish themselves, and in 41 electoral districts those who win are exclusively &#8220;nicknamed&#8221; oligarchs and representatives of the ruling authorities, no one can trust in fair elections.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If the government is speaking of free and fair elections, well, serious proof of this is needed, and the election fraud carried out by the government itself has to be reduced,&#8221; he concluded.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The majority electoral system is a suitable mechanism for election fraud; the Free Democrats party was always in support of proportional representation&#8230;<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":135211,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152925"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152925\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}