Armenian presidential hopeful, ex-President Levon Ter-Petrosyan appealed to the Constitutional Court "to recognize as insuperable the obstacles, which arose on the way of his participation in the February 19 elections."
Ter-Petrosyan's election headquarters of "unsuccessfully took up all the possible measures, provided for by the electoral legislation, to prevent violations of the law against the candidate or to eliminate their consequences".
According to the Armenian Electoral Code, in case of insuperable obstacles for one of the candidates, the election date is postponed for two weeks. If the obstacles are not removed, new elections are supposed to be held 40 days after the 2-week terms, IA Regnum reports.
According to surveys held by Populus, 50,7% of voters support Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan. He is followed by Orinats Yerkir party leader Artur Baghdassaryan (13,4%), Armenia's first President (12,6%), AFR Dashnaktsutyun Bureau member, Vice Speaker Vahan Hovhannisian (7,6%), National Unity party leader Artashes Geghamyan (6,4 %). People's Party leader (4,5%), National Democratic Union leader Vazgen Manukyan (3,2%), National Consent party leader Aram Harutyunyan (0,9%) and NKR
President's ex-advisor Arman Melikian (0,6%).
ECHO Research monitor network issued a report on the results of the media monitoring in Armenia for the first week of the pre-election campaign, which evidences its balanced coverage.
The European Foundation for Democracy, based in Brussels, ordered the realization of the monitoring. MediaBrand Company was the partner of ECHO Research in Armenia.
"The research showed that the Armenian media are free in general", the Head of the ECHO Research Department Karen Prichard stated. "The TV-channels quite fairly distribute the broadcast time among the candidates, and the press is quite diverse", she stated, noting at that the presence of considerable differences in the coverage of the broadcast and print media companies.
Experts of the International ECHO Research Company analyzed 743 TV-reports, radio-reports and newspaper articles, published in Armenia within the first week of the pre-election campaign, and came to the conclusion that 630 items from 743 showed no evidence of reporting bias.
Armenian Human Rights Defender Armen Harutyunyan stated that he is not satisfied with the coverage of the election campaign of the Public TV. The Ombudsman expressed hope that his statement will influence the further work of the PTV, and the marked phenomena will be corrected in the nearest future, Armenian media reports.
