Armenian MP demands to urgently discuss Azerbaijan's nationwide referendum at PACE
10/10/2016
The autumn session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) kicked off on Monday. At the session leader of the Prosperous Armenia faction, Naira Zohrabyan, who is also an MP of the Armennian National Assembly (NA), made an address, demanding to review in an ad hoc or urgent manner the nationwide constitutional referendum in Azerbaijan held on September 26, according to which Azerbaijan was declared a sultanate.
“I think that we are simply obliged to urgently discuss the referendum which took place in Azerbaijan on September 26. With that referendum a Council of Europe (CoE) member state officially turns into a sultanate, the main model of inheriting the power of the President being enshrined by the main law.
Through extending the president’s term in office from five to seven years and setting the minimum age limit for a presidential candidate from 35 to 25 years, Aliyev enshrined in the main law the provision on inheriting his presidential chair to Aliyev Junior.
And despite the calls of several Azerbaijani human rights organizations, Müsavat Party, the U.S. Department of State and a number of Congressmen to the country’s Constitutional Court to refuse to give positive conclusion to Aliyev’s subsequent authoritarian coercion, Azerbaijan turned into an authoritarian sultanate on September 26,” Zohrabyan said.
According to her, it is at least unclear how the PACE partners can consider this referendum legitimate when the entire international press and even several Azerbaijani media outlets published hundreds of facts on electoral fraud, for instance, on how schoolchildren were taken to cast ballot without having a right to vote.
“Moreover, the Azerbaijanis living in several different countries staged protests outside the Azerbaijani embassies in those countries with posters reading “People don’t want a king.” And after all this scandals, it is announced that 91 percent of the Azerbaijanis is for having a king,” Zohrabyan said.
“What happened in Azerbaijan on September 26 should be seriously discussed in this institution. We were silent when Aliyev set down his lifelong right to be nominated for president during the previous constitutional reforms. We are also silent now that a CoE member state officially declares itself a sultanate," she added.