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Draft law on amendments and annexes to Azerbaijanâ€™s Electoral Code recommended to plenary session of the parliament

09 June 2010 10:15 (UTC +04:00)

According to APA, chairman of the parliamentâ€™s committee on legal policy and state-building Ali Huseynov said a group of lawmakers from the New Azerbaijan Party (YAP) made a proposal about the amendments and annexes to the Electoral Code for improvement of electoral experience, coordinating it with the international standards and implementation of the worldâ€™s leading experience.

YAP representative Siyavush Novruzov declared the proposals for the amendments and annexes to the Electoral Code. He said first proposal is about the reducing of election term. â€œEarlier it was four months. Then we reduced it to 75 days. This term is very short in many countries. We propose to reduce the election term from 75 to 60 days. In this case, the campaign term is also reduced from 28 to 23 daysâ€.

Novruzov declared the second main proposal. â€œThe elections are funded by the government. The local and district election commissions are also funded by the government. While the government meets all expenditures it is not correct to provide the candidates with the resources. In 2005, many candidates were nominated to receive 200 AZN allocated for the election campaign. According to the law, the candidates not gaining three per cent of the votes should return those resources. But none of them did it so far. We propose to stop the government sponsoring of the electionsâ€.

MP Gudrat Hasanguliyev said he supported the proposals. â€œI also propose to reduce the election term double at least. But I concern over the proposal to reduce the campaign term from 28 to 23 days. I think it is not correct. There couldnâ€™t be equal campaign term for everyone. I propose the registered candidates to start the campaign. The financial resources are not so large. I donâ€™t believe that someone can do that to receive 200 AZN. I also think that the government sponsoring of the referendum process should be stopped, because it is an issue connected with the fortune of the state.

Delivering speeches at discussions MPs Fazail Aghamali and Sabir Hajiyev also said that they supported proposals.

MP Nizami Isgandarov said that it was a very pointful decision to decrease election time. To him, there is no need of such propaganda time for person who has ascendancy in the society: â€œDecreasing election time from 75 days to 60 is a very right decisionâ€.

MP also noted that cancellation of allocate money for election assumes great importance: â€œNew Azerbaijan Party put forward these proposals by expressing position of the entire society. We think that these proposals are grounded and advanced enoughâ€.

â€œMay be, this issue will be viewed at the instructions of Central Election Commission. In any case, we will view this proposeâ€, said Novruzov while taking stance on Gudrat Hasanguliyevâ€™s propose related to financing of referendum.

Representative of the OSCE Office in Baku Monica Martinez said that she was a supporter of wide discussions of offered for the document: â€œWe also do not consider right to sever state finance completely. Moreover, enough time should be given to candidates for their propagandaâ€.

Committee chairman Ali Huseynov said that once, there was an offer to decrease election time to 45 days. But that time, election commissions were not ready to hold election in such short period. But today, Central Election Commission has become a very professional organization, and election commission is able to hold election process in a short time: â€œThat is, such propose was put at one time too. We think that it is very normal proposalâ€.

The document was recommended to plenary meeting of the parliament after several discussions.