Nelly Lazaryan<\/strong> The election campaign period did not stand out at all with heated campaigning; in many cases it was even boring. After speeches by a few political groups, at all other meetings the same words were heard.<\/p>\n In previous elections, the forces apart from the ruling authorities representing the opposition came out with sharp criticism against each other, but during these elections, for a long time it seems they left space, likely considering future cooperation likely. Only in the last week was criticism by one opposition group against another a little noticeable. <\/p>\n With the exception of a few gatherings, particularly by the Tsarukyan alliance, this campaign wasn\u2019t held in crowded public squares; it was more so in indoor halls, especially in the case of the HHK [Republican Party of Armenia], which was accompanied by question-and-answer periods and mainly led only by Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan. <\/p>\n The ruling HHK\u2019s team, unlike in previous campaigns, almost did not take part in the campaigns. <\/p>\n Meanwhile, in the last elections, the notable HHK figures wearing red scarves with the slogan \u201cLet\u2019s believe, to change\u201d and led by the president met with thousands of voters. <\/p>\n There weren\u2019t many intrigues in this election, though the prime minister\u2019s campaign was more unconstrained. Meanwhile, in the last election, though the president\u2019s campaign was more tightly controlled, there were serious bloopers, such as \u201cthat\u2019s why a cucumber grows crooked,\u201d \u201cwe\u2019ll strike as much as we want,\u201d and so on. <\/p>\n Many of the political groups, as well as many of the individual candidates used Facebook a lot during these elections \u2014 and overestimated its possibilities a little bit, since real life differs from the Facebook reality.<\/p>\n More interesting in this election were the campaigns of some of the individual candidates, though they were trying as much as possible to conduct them without the presence of journalists. <\/p>\n Journalists found it difficult to know where the candidate was and what time he was going to meet with voters. <\/p>\n Especially surprising for me was the extreme passivity of the campaign in Gyumri, in that case when there were close to 110 candidates nominated from there. For example, Vardan Ghukasyan didn\u2019t have a [campaign] poster in the city at all and hadn\u2019t held any meetings separately with voters. He explained that he \u201cdoesn\u2019t go out so not to get framed.\u201d A little bit active here was Martun Grigoryan, who met with voters in indoor conditions.<\/p>\n Large-scale asphalting projects also didn\u2019t happen during these elections. Which, by the way, didn\u2019t please the voters. They\u2019re disappointed that there weren\u2019t any promises. <\/p>\n Tirayr Muradyan<\/strong> There were no political debates in media outlets during this period; the ruling political party avoided responding to sharp statements other parties directed at it. For example, when HAK [Armenian National Congress] leader Levon Ter-Petrossian was putting forth his thesis on the settlement of the Karabakh conflict, which crosses with the HHK [Republican Party of Armenia] program, the latter didn\u2019t comment in any way. <\/p>\n There were few times, for example in HHK\u2019s case, when I had the opportunity to ask Karen Karapetyan questions. I was present at more than 10 meetings, and during that time two or three times I\u2019ve asked him a question, and his answer lasted three minutes at best.<\/p>\n Tsarukyan\u2019s campaign was dynamic; I wanted to cover it more, but it didn\u2019t work out because of [limited] resources. This alliance and other political forces, having a certain suite of media outlets, got their wanted remarks to the electorate. For this reason, many journalists were deprived of the opportunity to ask questions regarding the points of their program or other issues. <\/p>\n The coverage of the individual candidates was hard, since there are 13 precincts, with 10\u201315 representatives from each party or alliance. If any media outlet really wanted to cover all the candidates in one precinct at least once, I don\u2019t think its resources would allow it. <\/p>\n In my case, I covered candidates who actively broke the law, were in funny situations, and were interesting for the public. Social media helped the other candidates: candidates created videos about themselves, shared them, and were satisfied with their campaign. <\/p>\n I mainly placed importance on the question-and-answer; I noticed there weren\u2019t any sharp questions in the ruling Republican\u2019s case. This format occurred with the ARF-D [Armenian Revolutionary Federation] and the other opposition groups, since they had more of an issue establishing contact and presenting their programs. <\/p>\n I was attentive to electoral violations at gatherings, especially campaigning, attempts at bribes, and so on in non-designated areas. <\/p>\n The standard circuit of questions at HHK\u2019s meetings was boring. I don\u2019t think it was intentional, but it referred to that bloc about which the prime minister could talk for hours.<\/p>\n There was always a humorous incident at almost all of Tsarukyan\u2019s meetings. At all his campaign meetings, I didn\u2019t turn off my camera at all: someone would be bowing at his feet; he would hug someone and pick them up; with someone else, he would arm wrestle; and so on.<\/p>\n Also among the series of funny incidents was when at [MP] Arakel Movsisyan<\/a>\u2019s meeting with parents and teachers at Tairov village school, one of the teachers stood up and said there\u2019s a journalist in the room, for which they are happy. This way, the teacher informed Movsisyan that I\u2019m there. The meeting lasted only 10 minutes. <\/p>\n Gayane Asryan<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Journalists are important actors in the election campaign. In a matter of four weeks, they are present at the dozen meetings and rallies of various political parties. Tert.am journalist Nelly Lazaryan and Armtimes.com journalist Tirayr Muradyan have been working in \u2018emergency mode\u2019 during this past month, following the election campaign in Yerevan and in the Read the full article…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7857,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsroom","author_posts-gayane-asryan"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7863"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7863\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23327,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7863\/revisions\/23327"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nWorking as a political journalist at Tert.am since 2011. A more intense campaign than during the previous elections was expected.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n![\"\"](\"\/sites\/default\/files\/nelli_lazaryan.jpg\")
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\nWorks at Armtimes.com. During the campaign period, he managed to cover the events of up to 3 political parties a day. In his opinion, the campaign process was very dynamic and saturated.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n![\"\"](\"\/sites\/default\/files\/tirayr-muradyan.jpg\")
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