CEC rejects Andreas Ghukasyan's complaint: his image will remain in President's campaign clip

• Wednesday, February 6, 19:31

On Feb 6 the Central Electoral Commission held an extraordinary session to discuss presidential candidate Andreas Ghukasyan's complaint. 

Andreas Ghukasyan, who has been on a hunger strike since Jan 21, expressed his discontent with the fact that his photos were used in the campaign clip of the incumbent President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan without his consent. On the photo Ghukasyan is among the brigade advocating dismantlement of the pavilions in Mashtots Park. "The citizens may get the wrong idea that Sargsyan supported those who held a protest action in Mashtots Park, but this approach has nothing to do with the reality", Ghukasyan said. In this context, he demanded that the CEC should stop disseminating the wrong information and take measures to prevent the President from using Ghukasyan's photo in his campaign.

CEC Head Tigran Mukuchyan says that the application does not mention the legal norms, based on which Ghukasyan could lay down those demands. He stresses that the CEC is not authorized to study the public's perception of information in order to find out whether that information creates a wrong idea or not.  Mukuchyan also points out that the law does not ban using other persons' images in the election campaign.  For instance, Raffi Hovannisian, another presidential candidate, is using the image of the incumbent president of Armenia.

As a result, the CEC has rejected Ghukasyan's complaint. However, Ghukasyan may appeal to the court against this decision of the CEC within the next 3 calendar days.