Suren Surenyants: Armenian TV Channels strongly hampered Ter-Petrosyan's pre-election campaign

By their one-sided coverage of the pre-election campaign, the TV Channels of Armenia, including the private ones, have really created compelling obstacles for the first Armenian president in the pre-election race. This was the comment made to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent by Suren Surenyants, a member of the Political Board of the "Respublika" Party, on the suit lodged by candidate for presidency Levon Ter-Petrosyan to the Constitutional Court.

"Although we have no special expectations from the Constitutional Court, we thought a must to fix the violations of the legislation made during the pre-election period and hand these facts over to respective bodies and demand from them to eliminate the obstacles for conducting the pre-election campaign of Levon Ter-Petrosyan," Mr Surenyants said.

We remind you that on February 8, Levon Ter-Petrosyan, a presidential candidate, addressed to the Constitutional Court with a demand to postpone the presidential election by two weeks. According to the statement of claim lodged by the first president, "the obstacles that have arisen for the reasons beyond my power during the presidential election race make impossible my further participation in the processes as prescribed by the Electoral Code of Armenia." In particular, it is noted that the news program "Ailur" at the Public Armenian TV had broadcast, during three months in a row, negative materials on the candidate Levon Ter-Petrosyan, which is a breach of Articles 18, 20 and 22 of the Electoral Code and Articles 11 and 28 of the Law "On Radio and TV of Armenia".