First blogger from "Heritage" Party runs for seat at Armenian Parliament

In Armenia, for the first time, a blogger intends to participate in the parliamentary elections scheduled for May 6. Izabella Abgaryan, who writes under the nickname of iza1976, is being nominated by proportional system from the "Heritage" Party.

"In recent years, I felt short of breath within my blog. My voice, and not only mine, but also voices of my friends, stayed in the network, and all initiatives ran into a stone of deep neglect of officials," stated Izabella Abgaryan, when commenting on her decision to be nominated as a candidate.

According to Izabella Abgaryan, she received the invitation and joined the "Heritage" Party, while remaining non-partisan.

According to her, "bloggers at the Parliament are able not only to present opinion of socially active citizens, but also to contribute to increased media coverage of the processes that occur within the walls of the Parliament." "They can provide answers to questions, with which representatives of any institution must provide them, since they are MPs," emphasized Izabella Abgaryan.

"In last two or three years, we witnessed the opening blogs and pages in social networks of politicians and government officials of various levels," she has added. "The other issue is that many of them represent one-sided platforms to publish press releases. So why should we not witness the reverse process?"

According to Izabella Abgaryan, "when you become a politician, you should be guided not by what you like about the political activity, but by the responsibility that you take over." "The fate of the country and its citizens, including the fate of my children, depends on the decisions made," stated the blogger.

Izabella Abgaryan keeps her blog in the "Live Journal" for four years already. According to the statistics of the Caucasian blogosphere of the "Live Journal", the blog of Izabella Abgaryan is one of the leaders in the Armenian sector by the number of records, sent and received comments and by the number of the top 100 posts.

According to blogger Tigran Kocharyan, the blogger-politician is not a new phenomenon for the Armenian political field. He believes that bloggers are being definitely respected by media and, consequently, their opinion should be listened to.

"Most of the popular Armenian bloggers are politicized, and almost all of them are non-partisan, and that fact gives them the opportunity to freely express their thoughts and disseminate their ideas among readers," emphasized Tigran Kocharyan.

He also believes that at present, namely for that reason, many parties turned to the civilian media sector and try either to cooperate, or, like in the case of the ''Heritage'' Party, to include bloggers into their lists.