Administrative Resources Misused by the Executive in Kapan Elections, H1 is Heavily Pro-KP: Daniel Ioannisyan

Daniel Ioannisyan, coordinator of the ISOC and member of the Public Council, wrote on his Facebook page: “In the Kapan elections, administrative resources are being misused by the executive, while H1 provides biased coverage favoring the KP party.

Initially, the executive allocated 9 million drams for some programs in Kapan. The government decided to allocate this amount to Kapan just a few days before the elections.

Then H1 begins to intensively cover this decision by the executive and equally intensively report on other subsidies provided to Kapan over the past three years. These subsidies were given over years, but Public TV only discusses the government’s allocation of funds to Kapan right before the elections. By the way, H1 is doing the same in other communities during the election period.

After that, both H1 and the government spare no effort to show the public that the KP candidate in Kapan, Davit Danielyan, is indeed a representative of the government. At first, Danielyan accompanies Deputy Prime Minister Suren Papikyan at the Zangezur Copper Molybdenum Combine, clearly demonstrating that he is a representative of the leadership.

By the way, Suren Papikyan is quite actively combining the performance of official duties in communities with pre-election campaigning, demonstrating that the government supporting communities and one of the candidates are identical.

Returning to Public Television, it is worth mentioning the interview of KP candidate Davit Danielyan in Kapan, during which Petros Ghazaryan once again reinforced the thesis that Danielyan is a representative of the government distributing subsidies.

Moreover, Danielyan was almost not asked any questions regarding local governance powers during the interview on H1. Instead, Petros Ghazaryan opened the propaganda themes that the KP is promoting in Kapan with his questions.

During the interview, Petros Ghazaryan even decided to underline for all viewers that the foreign policy line of the opposition Shant alliance would create security problems for Kapan.

Against this backdrop, it becomes clearer why the Civil Contract party was so opposed to the extension of the boundaries of administrative resource misuse prohibitions, and why some of its manifestations should be criminalized.”