Azerbaijan, Baku, 3 June /corr. TrendNews I.Alizade / The proposals of the Council of Europe's Venice Commission on changes to the election legislation of Azerbaijan were made to the Electoral Code. "Most of the suggestions were accepted by the Government of Azerbaijan," Latif Huseynov, Azerbaijan's Representative to the Venice Commission, said in his exclusive statement to Trend on 3 June.
On 2 June Azerbaijan Parliament adopted annexes and amendments to the Electoral Code.
The project canceled the system of registration of the presidential candidates by depositing cash. The number of electorate signatures, which the candidates have to present to the Central Election Commission for registration, has been reduced from 45,000 to 40,000. In addition, the term of election campaign was decreased from four months to 75 days. Further, the project imposed a ban to allocate ether time for the candidates on State televisions, increased the election funds of the candidates for presidency from AZN1mln to AZN10mln, for parliamentary candidates - from AZN 85,000 to AZN 500,000, liquidated the item on establishment of polling stations in military units. According to the amendments, the organizations holding exit-poll should pass registration In the Central Election Commission.
The project on changes and amendments into the Election Code was adopted as a result of the voting in the Parliament, with 100 MPs voted for, 3 against and 1 abstained from the voting.
Opposition parties protests against the amendments to the Electoral Code.
The draft to improve the Election Code was developed as a result of the discussions between the Azerbaijani government and Venice Commission of the Council of Europe.
The representative of the Secretariat of the Venice Commission, Sergey Kuznetsov, said that the Commission's suggestions regarding annexes and amendments to the election legislation of Azerbaijan were not made to the Electoral Code
"Sergey Kuznetsov is an ordinary employees of the Secretariat of the Venice Commission. Making such statements, he oversteps his authorities. Kuznetsov can not act on behalf of the Venice Commission," Huseynov said.
According to him, the Commission's suggestions on preventing illegal interference in the election process, putting ballots into envelopes, giving special identities to the observers, indicating addresses of the voters in the election lists, marking fingers of the electors were made to the Electoral Code. "Other suggestions of the Venice Commission were also made to the Electoral Code," he said.
Huseynov said that Venice Commission's suggestions on changing the composition of the election commissions in Azerbaijan were not accepted.
He said that the meeting of the Venice Commission will take place on 14-15 June to announce its closing comments remarks on making amendments to the Electoral Code of Azerbaijan.
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