Opposition Pushes For Big Change In Voting System

-- YEREVAN -- 

In a rare display of unity, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutiun) and the Heritage party advocated the abolition of elections held in single-seat constituencies in a joint statement issued on December 28.

The Armenian National Congress (HAK), another major opposition group, also supported the demand.

But President Serzh Sarkisian's Republican Party (HHK), which has a solid majority in the current parliament, rejected the idea.

Armenia's current electoral legislation distributes 90 of the 131 seats in the National Assembly under the system of proportional representation. The remaining 41 deputies are elected on an individual basis.

The opposition has long demanded that proportional representation be extended to the entire assembly, saying that it carries more safeguards against electoral fraud. Opposition leaders say voters electing individual legislators in their districts are more vulnerable to government intimidation and vote buying.

They say this is why opposition candidates rarely win in the single-mandate districts. The vast majority of those seats are currently held by wealthy and government-connected individuals.

The statement by the Dashnaktsutiun and Heritage parties said that the Armenian authorities would demonstrate the seriousness of their pledges to ensure the proper conduct of the May elections if they accepted the opposition's demand.

Armen Rustamian, a Dashnaktsutiun leader, warned on December 28 that rejection of the demand would mean that the authorities were keen to ensure their 'reproduction' through vote manipulation.

'The single-mandate system gives the authorities an unfair advantage from the beginning,' he said.

The HAK, which has an uneasy relationship with both of those opposition parties, welcomed their initiative as an 'important and necessary step toward ensuring the legitimacy and transparency of the elections.'