MP: authorities need majority election system for reproduction

 September 22, 2011 - 17:01 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net - Armenia’s authorities lack political will for holding fair elections and need the majority system for reproduction, a member of parliament said.

“Authorities do not wish to give away the tools of their reproduction, and they will fight for them. We will be fighting against those tools,” Armen Rustamyan, ARF Dashnaktsutyun party member, said at a political debate on election systems.

He stressed that not a single opposition or independent candidate, who would later become opposition supporter, has won a seat by majority system. According to Rustamyan, money is the decisive factor in those elections. Here he ironically suggested authorities holding auctions for deputy mandates on majority system and use the money for settling issues in the constituencies.

He said Armenia’s key problem is that people do not believe that they can achieve change of power through elections.

For his part, Heritage party member Ruben Hakobyan noted that Armenia saw the only fair election in 1990 in the soviet election system. He stressed that proportional representation system in Armenia is a must.

Today, 90 of Armenia’s 131 National Assembly deputies are elected by proportional system and 41 by majority system.

The debates were initiated by the Armenian Center for Political and International Research assisted by the US National Democracy Institute (NDI).