{"id":79116,"date":"2011-03-24T17:59:25","date_gmt":"2011-03-24T13:59:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/?p=79116"},"modified":"2011-03-24T18:58:30","modified_gmt":"2011-03-24T14:58:30","slug":"pace-co-rapporteurs-welcome-reforms-in-armenia-but-stress-concrete-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2011\/03\/24\/pace-co-rapporteurs-welcome-reforms-in-armenia-but-stress-concrete-action.html","title":{"rendered":"PACE Co-Rapporteurs Welcome Reforms in Armenia, But Stress Concrete Action"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At the end of a two-day visit to Yerevan, the monitoring co-rapporteurs for Armenia of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), John Prescott (United Kingdom, SOC) and Axel Fischer (Germany, EPP\/CD) have welcomed the significant number of reforms with regard to the police, judiciary and election framework that were initiated by the authorities to address the recommendations made in the wake of the March 2008 events by, among others, PACE and the National Assembly of Armenia, reads a Mar. 23\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/assembly.coe.int\/ASP\/NewsManager\/EMB_NewsManagerView.asp?ID=6475&amp;L=2\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong>press release on the PACE website<\/strong><\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>At the same time they stressed that the many concepts developed should now be translated into draft legislation and concrete policies in order the implement the reforms needed for the country.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe successful completion of a number of reforms, especially electoral reform, is essential to ensure genuinely democratic parliamentary elections in 2012,\u201d said the rapporteurs, highlighting the importance of these elections for the democratic development of the country.<\/p>\n<p>While welcoming the progress made by the authorities since their last visit, the rapporteurs also noted that there are still a number of outstanding issues related to the March 2008 events that need to be addressed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe ongoing detention of persons for their role in the March 2008 events, as well as the lack of a proper inquiry into the causes of the 10 casualties that occurred during these events continue to poison the political environment in Armenia,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis risks having a negative impact on next year\u2019s elections,\u201d they added. \u201cWe therefore call upon the authorities to show the necessary political will to satisfactorily resolve these issues without further delay.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The rapporteurs intend to present a report on the progress made by Armenia with regard to these issues during the Assembly\u2019s September session.<\/p>\n<p>Recall that mass protests against alleged electoral fraud in Armenia, organized by supporters of unsuccessful presidential candidate, first president of the Republic of Armenia Levon Ter-Petrossian, followed the presidential election of Feb. 19, 2008. On Mar. 1, 2008, national police and military forces, called in to disperse the crowds, used &#8220;excessive force and violence&#8221; which left 10 people dead and many more wounded.<\/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 monitoring co-rapporteurs for Armenia of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), John Prescott and Axel Fischer&#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":79118,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[13386,12088,12089,23845],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79116"}],"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=79116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79116\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}