Hayastani Hanrapetutyun: Political parties to face legislative ban on commercial activity

A parliament working group tasked with elaborating electoral reforms has agreed on a range of pivotal issues for liberalizing and increasing the transparency of political parties' work and revising financial oversight and internal democracy procedures.

In comments to the paper, the coordinator of the group, Hamazasp Danielyan (My Step facntion), said they are currently in a process of transforming the legal text of the proposed principles to rule out donations by private entities. ″As for legal entities, the amount of donations will be revised for them to establish a single maximum limit for both donations and membership fees. Donations presently are made separately from membership fees. Additionally, political parties will be banned from engaging in any commercial activity to receive, among other things, income through movable or immovable property,″ he said, adding that a range of issues are yet to be finalized.

Hovhannisyan also unveiled plans for establishing accountability mechanims for charity foundations, NGOs and private individuals linked to political parties to apply possible sanctions to them in case of a breach of transparency procedures.