Palace of Youth, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Hetq Online

As one of Yerevan’s most famous landmarks is dismantled to make room for a new hotel after it was sold for $740,000 in January 2004, why not use it in the meantime as a giant billboard to urge voters to accept the constitutional amendments scheduled to be put to the nation in a referendum on Sunday?

Meanwhile, A1 Plus reports on the results of the Yerevan Press Club’s monitoring of the media in the run-up to the vote. Not surprisingly, most of the coverage on television has been overwhelmingly positive to the changes.

According to the numbers, the picture has not changed much since last week. For example, the news program of “H2” has referred to the Constitutional amendments in 40 of its 140 programs. 26 of them contained positive references, 2 of them – negative and 12 – neutral. In comparison to last week’s results positive references have grown, while negatives have not changed.

The news program “Haylur” of the National TV Company has made 34 materials about the Constitutional amendments. 14 of them referred to the amendments positively, 2 – negatively, and 18 – neutrally. Of the 16 materials about the theme by ALM 5 were positive, and 11 were neutral. As for the Armenia TV, all the programs for the last two weeks referred to the amendments positively.

According to RFE/RL, advertisements propagandizing for the amendments are being aired free by the government-controlled TV media while nobody is sure who is paying for billboard advertisements on the streets of the capital. Interestingly, I have yet to see any billboards urging people to vote against or to boycott the amendments.

Incidently, as I went closer to the Palace of Youth, a guy in a military jacket and an earpiece told me photographs of the building being dismantled were forbidden. Well, the photograph above was taken from the street so I’d like to know what law stipulates that.