Speaking of the snap parliamentary elections held on December 9 last year, Vahagn Hovakimyan, deputy from the “My Step” bloc, made several remarkable statements that are either a result of ignorance of facts, or just a manipulation.
In particular, the MP drew parallels between the elections of 2017 and 2018, and stated that we had the same legal framework and within the same legislative framework we had free, fair and transparent elections. The MP also added that the elections were free and fair due to the political will of authorities, and not the legislation.
In fact, however, the legislation, according to which the 2017 elections were held, is essentially different from the 2018 legislation. In particular, some of the provisions of the RA Criminal Code of April 2, 2017, were made tougher by amendments and additions of September 7, 2018, and some administrative offenses became criminal offenses and the penalties for a number of violations became stricter.
In other words, it can be argued that the legal framework was not the same as during the previous elections.
Besides, due to the amendments and supplements to the RA Electoral Code adopted during the March 20 session of the National Assembly, the responsibility for abuse of administrative resources was also toughened.
Accordingly, it can be concluded that the previous government did a lot of work to organize and conduct free and transparent elections, and it is not right to attribute the results of the recent elections to the current authorities only.
