Amendments to Armenian election law signed by parliament speaker
YEREVAN, April 26. /ARKA/. Armenian Parliament Speaker Ararat Mirzoyan has signed on Monday into law a set of amendments to the Electoral Code approved on April 1.
According to the law, parliament-approved bills are signed into law by the president of the country, however, President Armen Sarkissian refused to sign the amendments into law and neither
challenged their constitutionality within 21 days since their passage by the legislature.
When this deadline expired, the power to sign the amendments were given to the parliament speaker in accordance with Part 3 of Article 129 of the Constitution.
The last two parliamentary elections in Armenia were held under the so-called rating system (territorial candidate lists) when the voters voted not only for parties and electoral blocs but also individual candidates nominated by them.
According to critics, this system allowed wealthy candidates from then ruling Republican Party of Armenia to earn votes through vote bribes and abuse of their administrative resources.
The changes, proposed by the ruling majority, apart from eliminating the rating system also set a new threshold for parties and party blocs. The threshold for political parties is 4%, for blocs of two parties - 8%, for blocs of three parties - 9% and for blocks of four or more parties - 10%.
The changes also propose that the mandatory number of political forces represented in parliament be raised from the current three to four. The size of the electoral deposit for parties running in the parliamentary elections will also be reduced to 7.5 million drams, while for party blocs it is to double to 15 million drams.
The amendments were welcomed by the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission, and the OSCE/ODIHR.
'Having examined the conformity of the procedure of their development, as well as the conformity of the amendments with international standards, the opinion concludes that the package is to be broadly welcomed, as it addresses the majority of previous recommendations, but improving these amendments is still recommended,' they said in a joint statement last week.
The opinion was requested by the speaker of the National Assembly of Armenia on 4 March 2021 and is based inter alia on a series of video conferences with representatives of state and non-state actors.
The Venice Commission and the ODIHR noted with satisfaction that the reform went through broad consultations among different political forces, civil society and expert community and took place within an adequate timeframe, assuring the widest possible support to the amendments.'-0-
