Yesterday it became known that the city council of Yerevan denied the appeal of the Armenian National Congress to hold a rally in the Liberty Square scheduled for September 17. Instead they offered the ANC to hold the rally in the Matenadaran area. Both the “justification” of Yerevan mayor and this decision of the city council created the same reaction within the ANC as in the past. The city council made its regular nonsense decision with no legal justification. The city council stated that on that day they have two other cultural events scheduled. And the ANC qualified this decision as evident “illegality.” But in general the decisions of the city council to ban the rallies of the ANC seem ridiculous. The ANC has long ago stopped to be a threat for the incumbent government, which would make the latter to ban and encumber the rallies at any cost. The best evidence of that is the political processes of the past year at least and the behavior of the ANC. Despite the fact that the ANC declares that starting from September 17 it is going to start the series of rallies many people even within the ANC don’t believe that these rallies will continue, so the impression is that the ANC by its habit resumes the series of rallies and the government by its habit tries to ban those. And most importantly, the policies of both the opposition and the government lack political component by making their behavior merely a matter of “habits.”
