Civil Contract MP proposes ban on recently renamed parties to prevent electoral foul play

Civil Contract MP Taguhi Ghazaryan has proposed barring political parties that have changed their names within the previous two years from participating in elections, in an effort to prevent possible foul play in the electoral process.

Ghazaryan made the proposal during a parliamentary debate on a report on the activities of the Central Electoral Commission.

Ghazaryan said the current regulations allow even parties established just days before an election to participate.

“The current regulation is written in such a way that parties established just a few days before an election, even three days before registration, can participate in elections. Since we did not envisage such a scenario for elections, we did not write a preventive provision,” Ghazaryan said.

According to her, the financial activity of parties that have been operating for years is monitored by the Corruption Prevention Commission, whereas no similar oversight is exercised over the previous financial activity of new parties formed on the basis of public, charitable or other organizations before elections.

“The financial activity of old parties is monitored by the Corruption Prevention Commission, and everyone can see it. Meanwhile, nothing is known about the financial activity of new parties. Our experience in previous elections showed that these parties are established as charitable, public or other types of organizations, whose financial activity the Corruption Prevention Commission cannot monitor in the same way,” the MP said.

Ghazaryan also said that allowing existing parties to participate in elections after changing their names creates problems.

“The practice of, so to speak, renting out party seals during elections is not new. We have seen that these are not actually functioning parties and are phenomena aimed at distorting the political system,” she said.

As one possible solution to the problem, the MP proposed restricting the participation in elections of parties that have changed their names within the previous two years.

“In this regard, the only idea I can propose is that we should at least also prohibit parties that have undergone a name change within the previous two years from participating in elections, so that people participate in politics through their political activities, rather than through machinations,” Ghazaryan stressed.

She also raised as a problem the practice of allocating places designated for non-partisan candidates on electoral lists to leaders of other political parties.

According to Ghazaryan, in such cases, a party is effectively participating in elections in the format of an alliance, while benefiting from the lower electoral threshold set for a party.