“THE THRESHOLD MUST BE LOWERED”
Support A1+!The Ramkavar-Azatakan and the Powerful Homeland Parties were concerned by the draft Electoral Code which was sent to the Venice Commission by the NA. Today they organized a discussion of the Electoral Code.
According to them, the reforms offered in the Electoral Code can aggravate the atmosphere of non-confidence and intolerance. According to the RA present Electoral Code, the mandates meant for the NA proportional elections are distributed to those parties and blocs who had at least 5% and 7% of votes respectively.
According to the new draft, the threshold for one party participating in the Parliamentary elections 5%, for the alliance of two parties – 7%, and for that of three or more parties – 10%. Member of the Ramkavar-Azatakan party Haroutyun Araqelyan announced that it is meaningless to establish threshold as we do not have the definition of the «political alliance».
According to Shirak Torosyan, member of the Central Administration of the Powerful Homeland party, the draft creates more favorable conditions for the alliances of three or more parties as they must gather twice as less votes as separate parties. «Factually the parties are forced to form alliances, and very often that is done mechanically without taking into account ideological differences».
The Powerful Homeland offers to make the threshold lower for both the separate parties and the alliances.
