Arman Kozhakhmetov: “There is a high pluralism of political opinion in Russia”

"Today’s meetings were very fruitful and useful for observers, we saw various spectrums of opinion from the leading political parliamentary parties.

At the same time, each of the parties gave its own assessment, independently, on the current situation and the electoral legislation, on the reforms in the country, and on the situation in Afghanistan. Pluralism of opinions in Russia is very high, everyone expressed their opinion absolutely openly,” Arman Kozhakhmetov, coordinator of the group of international observers of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Collective Security Treaty Organization and Chairman of the Committee on Legislation and Judicial and Legal Reform of the Mazhilis of the Parliament of the Republic of Kazakhstan, said on September 17 during the meetings with the heads of political parties represented in State Duma of 7th Convocation.

“Regarding the situation with the ongoing elections in general, there is criticism that there are certain violations. However, information about this is provided in a calm manner and will be given a legal assessment. It is a part of the working process, we will look into it. Perhaps there was an unintentional mistake somewhere or the documents were evaluated incorrectly,” he said.

Arman Kozhakhmetov stressed: “This is a part of the working process; all of these issues can be legally resolved, as the party leaders themselves are sure. In general, each of them evaluates the campaign period of the election campaign positively. Though, there were suggestions that something should be changed afterwards, the duration of political debates should be increased, so the voters could get more detailed information about the candidates’ positions.”

The CSTO PA observer group coordinator said: “Opinions have been voiced about the three-day deadline for voting: that it may be superfluous, that one day will be enough to decide on the choice. But I think that is the position that will also be discussed in the parliament in the future. In this case we believe that this is an absolutely normal model.”