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Panorama.am – A working group has been formed to examine the recommendations made by the international and expert organizations on the electoral process, their improvements and the Electoral Code. The working group leaded by You should present those recommendations to the Parliament. Is the group core structured? How should it function?

David Harutyunyan – The core has not been yet structured, but it is in the process of it. I hope to get some recommendations during these days at least from the parliamentarian authorities, but I expect that also non-parliamentarian bodies who participated in the elections will be more active. Why I do expect that: the electoral code is a special type of legislation. During the elections it has its influence on those political bodies who are not considered as parliamentarians. In this regard it is important to come to a consensus which is a reliable one and that the electoral processes are properly held.

Of course, we could accept that the law implemented today is a good one and we have enough chances to hold advanced elections. But since we do not manage to have such elections or if a part of the society does not rely on the current one, we can have some things to be done in regard to the legislation.

The thing is that the same regulation can have various implementations in different countries. For instance, in our country the representatives of the political parties in the electoral committees keep feeling as if they are the party’s interests defenders. Whereas in the world, where the traditional democracy is founded, the representatives of the parties in the electoral committees treat themselves as the defenders of the citizen’s right to vote and to be voted for, and quite not the interests of their parties. As a result, we have following: the representative of the party noticing that his party’s votes are fewer and not enough can just leave the electoral committee.

Our objective is to take into account the implementation of this or that regulation make reforms which would result in positive outcome and receive more social reliability, more transparent and controllable process and equal conditions for everyone.

Panorama.am – So, are the gaps of the electoral code or lack of civil will for the full implementation of the law problems?

David Harutyunyan – We face both lack of civil will to hold proper elections and problems connected with the reforms of the legislation. I guess, it is impossible to separate them from each other, as they both are important elements and at the same time there is an interaction between them. We should not rely on political will only, as they are different things what the country’s authorities think and what happens in certain cases. Sometimes the situations are not supervised when somebody decides to “serve a bear service”. So in order to avoid such uncontrollable cases we need to establish mechanisms, and then the political will is to be implemented properly.

Panorama.am – Do You think people will rely on the working group activities?

David Harutyunyan – Much depends on the opposition. If the opposition considers that the legislation needs to be reformed and if they take part in the group’s activities, I guess, we’ll manage to go one step forward. Otherwise if the opposition announces a boycott, it will not serve to its purpose. I mean, to announce a boycott without leaving any room for cooperation. But, I think that this current legislation is important enough for not announcing any boycott.

Panorama.am – How do you evaluate the fact that irrespective of PACE article and irrespective of authorities wish to carry out those recommendations, in these days “Intellectuals Forum” organization has been searched out connected with March 1 events and 17 citizens have been called to a police station?

David Harutyunyan – There is no doubt that criminal actions took place in March 1-2. And there is no doubt that proper mechanisms should be carried out to reveal those criminal actions.

How much proper are the mechanisms? Unfortunately, I do not have any guarantee that the mechanisms carried out previously were proper and I think that we need to revise the approaches quite seriously. Everything should be done to reveal those criminal actions, to call the responsible bodies to the court and as well as there are no political themes in those accusations.

Is it succeeded? I guess, no. That’s why PACE paid a special attention on that point and we should learn of it. Have we learned at the moment or not? I am not sure we have learned from that and I think we have to work hard in this regard. We have time to do it, we have a month for that and we should be conscious that this issue is important for us.

Again the same question: is the society sure that there are no political views in it? Let’s suppose there are not. But does the society rely on it? I think not always, and this is we who should do everything to prove the society to trust our official bodies but not the society to rely on the processes.

Panorama.am – Is anything being done in this regard?

David Harutyunyan – To me even if something is done is not sufficient.