Azernews.Az

The outstanding issues on changes to Azerbaijan's election laws concern electoral commissions and reduction in the term of election campaigns, a presidential administration official has said.
Although the Council of Europe Venice Commission has fully agreed with the amendments and supplements to the Law on Freedom of Assembly, the government and CE experts are yet to agree the Election Code changes, head of the President's Office socio-political department, Ali Hasanov, told the press Friday.
Hasanov said recent talks with the Commission representatives were constructive and agreements were reached. At the same time, there were some challenging issues the solution of which requires the involvement of all socio-political organizations.
"It is extremely hard to reach agreement on such issues, for example, with regard to electoral commissions," Hasanov said.
18 seats in the commissions are currently equally split among pro-government, opposition and independent members, but the opposition claims that independent members tend to favor the government.
Hasanov recalled that the issue was discussed at an earlier event of the Venice Commission in Baku where all interested sides were represented, but no common ground was struck.
He said another issue that remains open is halving the term of election campaigns to two months. Legislation on electoral changes forwarded to the parliament did not cite such a proposal.
"We have not made a proposal to reduce the term. But some political forces believe that four months is too long for an election campaign. They say that the campaigns do not take that long in any country. There might be truth to that. But there are differences of opinion. The final decision will be passed after discussions in parliament."
Hasanov stressed that changes to election laws would be made strictly in line with Azerbaijan's national interests.
"The Venice Commission has certain proposals, and the ones that would promote democratic conduct of elections in the country will be taken into account, while the proposals to cause confusion and make the electoral process dependent on the will of any interested side will not be considered," Hasanov said.