Lawyers submit a Memorandum on democratization of presidential elections in 2013

Fifteen lawyers and civil society activists of Azerbaijan signed on Monday a Memorandum on improvement to the electoral law to ensure democratic presidential elections on 16 October, 2013.

"This is a message for all political forces in the country to discuss and work out a joint platform of measures to reform the electoral law," said Anar Mammadov, the head of the Elections Monitoring and Democracy Studies Center (EMDSC) at the presentation  in the Media Center.

The memorandum is also a call to the public to pay attention to the steady deterioration of the electoral law and practice, the termination of the government's cooperation with the international organizations - the Council of Europe's Venice Commission and the ODIHR OSCE.

A lawyer Vidadi Mirkamal said that the Memorandum is open for signature and will be sent for discussion to all political forces. The memorandum is the consolidating document for those who do not agree with the terms of the election. The memorandum will also be submitted to the government and the ruling party "Yeni Azerbaijan". The basic idea is to jointly develop measures for democratic elections, he said.

The head of the NGO "Center for Law and Development", Hafiz Hasanov, said that, if the principles of the Memorandum are approved by broad political spectrum, drafts will be submitted for amendment to the legislation. "We do not pursue any political interests. We propose the formation of the legal conditions to hold free and fair elections," said Hasanov.

A former member of the CEC, Gulaga Aslanli, stressed that if the Azerbaijani authorities want to hold democratic elections, we must take lessons from the recent elections in Georgia, and start cooperation with a wide range of political forces.

According to the head of the Center to Study Democracy, Mirali  Huseinov, the memorandum may serve as an impetus for dialogue between the government and political forces for the elections. He reminded that the mediator of such a dialogue was the OSCE Office in Baku, which last took place before the presidential elections in 2008.   The document provides for the implementation of reforms in six directions.

The first relates to a change of the electoral system and provides for restoration of the mixed majority-proportional system of elections (to parliament.)

 The second area involves changing the principles of formation of election commissions and representation in them of the main political forces on an equal basis.

 The third provides for the simplification of registration procedures. 

 The fourth involves the creation of a fair environment for the fair pre-election campaign (prolongation of the election campaign from 60 to 120 days),  a campaign from 22 to 60 days, the abolition of restrictions on freedom of assembly, the creation of  equal conditions  of agitation in the electronic media.

The next two directions provide a fair consideration of complaints (creation of independent fact-finding teams), and the transparency of vote counting (by introducing a system of parallel counting.)—06C--