Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly-Vanadzor

The Independent Observer Alliance conducted monitoring of three information platforms funded by public sources, in order to find out whether coverage through those platforms is used to provide initial advantage for Tigran Avinyan in the elections. To answer this question, we counted the number of times former Yerevan mayor Hrachya Sargsyan, current temporary mayor of Yerevan,  first vice mayor Levon Hovhannisyan, deputy mayors Tigran Avinyan, Gevorg Simonyan, Stepan Machyan and Suren Grigoryan were covered in those platforms since September 2022 (after Tigran Avinyan was appointed) until July 2023. The Independent Observer Alliance conducted monitoring of the website of the First News Channel and the official page of Yerevan municipality on Facebook.

Below is the picture obtained from the quantitative analysis of the results.

In the official website of Yerevan city,

• Hrachya Sargsyan was mentioned 66 times,
• Levon Hovhannisyan was mentioned 49 times,
• Tigran Avinyan was mentioned 66 times, 
• the other three deputy mayors were mentioned 26 times in total.

In the Facebook page of the municipality,

• Hrachya Sargsyan was mentioned 126 times,
• Levon Hovhannisyan was mentioned 92 times,
• Tigran Avinyan was mentioned 147 times,
• the other three deputy mayors were mentioned 50 times in total.

In the First News Channel,

• Tigran Avinyan was mentioned 60 times,
• Levon Hovhannisyan was mentioned 4 times,
• Hrachya Sargsyan was mentioned 19 times,
• out of the other three vice mayors, only Suren Grigoryan was mentioned twice.
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It is difficult to measure the advantage that Civil Contract candidate Tigran Avinyan got as a result of using the above-mentioned administrative resources. However, it is obvious that the use of those resources was organized intentionally, in a coordinated way, by adopting sublegislative acts, as a result of which Avinyan becomes the main contender for the position of Yerevan mayor, while his competitors have to stance in the conditions of his initial advantage.