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No legislative irregularities and obvious violations of regulatory norms were reported during coverage of the constitutional referendum held Sunday in Armenia,” Head of Yerevan Press Club Boris Navasardyan said today when presenting the results of monitoring of coverage by Armenian broadcast media of the December 6 constitutional referendum in Armenia.

“Six television channels such as First Channel (H1), Second Channel (H2), Yerkir Media, Kentron, Armenia, and Shant and reporters of those TV channels provided balanced coverage of the campaign ahead of the constitutional referendum, with no obvious signs of partiality being noticed,” Navasardyan said.

In his words, monitoring was conducted by Yerevan Press Club from October 26 to December 4, 2015.
“The events organized included debates, television programs, and ‘Yes and No’ reality show jointly produced by of Armnews and A1+ Channels   and also aired by Armenia and First Channel,” Navasardyan said.

“Monitoring was conducted in three stages. The first two stages ended on October 19, and during that period coverage of the campaign ahead of the referendum was very balanced– no force was noted for any advantages. The third stage showed that the ruling Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) already had a great advantage over the other political forces,” B. Navasardyan noted adding that “this was mainly due to the interview of Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan with representatives of several Armenian TV companies”.

“In this case we cannot point out a violation of the law, but from the viewpoint of the rules of conducting a campaign, that phenomenon was undesirable,” Navasardyan said.

As an example of another problem, he cited Triangle political talk show hosted by deputy chairman of RPA, Armenian Minister of Education and Science Armen Ashotyan.

According to Navasardyan, “a member of ‘No” Front, namely the ARF-Dashnaktsutyun party, was passive in the final stage and lagged behind a little. The opposition Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP) also conducted a rather passive campaign.  In the last two weeks of the referendum campaign, a member of No Front – the opposition Armenian National Congress (ANC) Party moved ahead as compared with opposition parties Orinats Yerkir and Heritage.

“RPA used paid airtime by 90%, which speaks of resources,” Navasardyan said.