‘Hayots Hayrenik’ Party Used Only 13 Out of 90 Minutes of Free Air Time, Says HRH President Tigran Hakobyan

The ‘Hayots Hayrenik’ party has utilized only 13 minutes of the free 90 minutes of airtime provided for campaigning on public television and radio. Additionally, the radio airtime was not used at all.

This was announced today by Tigran Hakobyan, the president of the National Commission for Television and Radio, during the ongoing examination of a lawsuit to invalidate the election results, suggesting to ‘Hayots Hayrenik’ representative Artak Galstyan that he explain why the party declined to use this campaigning resource.

“For comparison, I would like to mention that other protesting political forces have effectively utilized this airtime,” Hakobyan stated.

“At the start of the campaign, 3 minutes of free airtime were given for placing advertisements. By the time we prepared our pre-election advertisement, 2-3 days had passed, after which the preliminary advertisement was given to H1. The advertisement was 4 minutes long and was aired for 3 days before being removed. We even suggested that we were willing to pay extra for that advertisement to start airing again, but you told us that such an authority could not be granted,” the representative of ‘Hayots Hayrenik’ said.

HRH President clarified that the suggestion was made not to them – the Commission – but to H1, and noted that an answer had not yet been received as to why the party did not take advantage of its right to free airtime.