The PACE Committee on the Rules of Procedure, Immunities and Institutional Affairs has adopted a decision on the deprivation of 14 MPs of the right to access the Council of Europe and the Parliamentary Assembly premises for life. Obviously, this decision of the Committee very much surprised me. If you look through the features, in other words, the details of the decision adopted, surely, you will also be surprised.
Thus,
Detail 1: None of 14 persons who “were sanctioned” by the Committee on the Rules of Procedure in a form of “deprivation of the right to access the Council of Europe and the Parliamentary Assembly premises for life” is member of PACE and 11 out of them currently do not engage in any political activities at all.
Detail 2: Most of the “sanctioned” persons are former parliamentarians, are no longer the Member of Parliament in their respective countries and do not engage in active political and public activities.
It is very surprising, isn’t it? If a person, who is not the member of any organization, is prohibited to access the premise of that organization, how would this “prohibition” be interpreted? Even if that person does not have a chance to apply for membership status of the organization, namely, is not the member of his/her country’s parliament, what will be in this case? In my opinion, this reminds the prohibition applying to vegetarians on eating meat.
Detail 3: In the decision, one can come across the phrase “deprivation for life” regarding each “sanctioned” person.
It is very interesting, isn’t it? It is known that any parliamentarian visits Strasbourg in order to attend the PACE sessions and committee meetings and this visit is financed by the national parliaments of those MPs.
I wonder if anyone who is not a member of the PACE and his/her respective national parliament, who no longer takes an active role would like to visit the Council of Europe with his/her pension. Thus, as mentioned above, some of the “sanctioned” are no longer MPs and have ended their political activities for over 10 years. Here is the question: if they want to meet any PACE member, cannot they travel to the city where that member lives or meet at a café in one of the European capital cities or merely in Strasbourg? Nevertheless, to what extent does “for life sanctioning” of people, who have dedicated most part of their lives to public and political activities and who are in their mature adulthood, comply with the humanism principle often voiced by Europe? The adoption of such a decision is of a foolish and tragicomic nature.
Detail 3: When looking through the list of persons “sanctioned” by the Committee, it appears clear that many of them are the politicians defending Azerbaijan’s just voice and expressing objective remarks regarding the Armenian aggression against Azerbaijan from time to time. In my opinion, in order to reveal inner face of the decision-makers, we should pay an attention to another detail. I believe that this point is serious enough to cast a permanent doubt on the objectivity of the European institution and reveals the inner face of the decision-makers.
Finally, there appears a question: What does the PACE want to say by adopting a decision on “the deprivation of the right to access the Council of Europe and the Parliamentary Assembly premises for life” concerning the people who are not members of this organization, mainly, who are retired and who had engaged in public and political activities in main part of their conscious lives? Does it mean that PACE now engages in activities of imitative nature, but not the real works?
Lastly, I invite you to read my articles entitled “PACE again wants to turn Azerbaijan into a political battlefield” of June 12, 2018 and “Why have I refused to cooperate with the Independent External Investigation Body?” of June 19, 2018 in order to get acquainted with the source of the decision adopted by the Committee on Rules of Procedure,
Elkhan Suleymanov
Member of the Parliament