Candidates for president used less free and paid air for campaigning than during previous years

• Monday, February 18, 12:45

Candidates for president of Armenia used less free and paid air for campaigning than during previous years, Grigor Amalyan, Head of the National Commission for Television and Radio told media on February 18. 

He linked the given circumstances with good work of mass media.  Amalyan recalled that a total of 586 hours of airtime were provided for election campaign. A minute of paid airtime of TV companies was 1300-120,000 drams, while the minute of airtime of radio companies was 1200-3600 drams. 19 TV companies and 3 radio companies offered paid airtime for candidates for president.

The 6th presidential election in the history of independent post-Soviet Armenia kicked off on February 18 at 8:00am local time.  A total of 41 district election commissions and 1988 territorial election commissions are operating in the country, with 7 commissions being set up at penitentiaries. 

A total of 2 million 505,000 people have been included in the electoral registers.

Thus, the presidential candidates are as follows: incumbent president Serzh Sargsyan from the Republican Party and former prime minister Hrant Bagratyan from the Liberty Party. All the remaining are self- nominated candidates:  Leader of the Union for National Self-Determination Party Paruyr Hayrikyan, Leader of Heritage Party Raffi Hovannisian, Advisor for Political Issues of the Refugees and the International Law Civil Society Network, ex-foreign minister of NKR Arman Melikyan, political expert Andrias Ghukasyan, and specialist in epic Vardan Sedrakyan. The elections will be held on Feb 18 2013.