Let’s take into account that the united opposition includes several parties, which, according to party members, have thousands of supporters. In that case “what’s the reason that the number of rally participants is so few?” In the opinion of the chairman of the Liberal Progressive Party of Armenia (LPPA) Hovhannes Hovhannisyan there is no need to consider this issue in such a simple way. H. Hovhannisyan agrees that the level of seriousness of the rally depends on the number of participants, however the things that happened on Referendum Day (Nov. 27) made the public totally indifferent towards the whole processes. The public has totally rejected the referendum. This is a very serious and deep issue and both the opposition and the government must do a very thorough analysis because what happened on November 27 was really unprecedented. “The society has made the first step. The society has ultimately said “no” to the current government”, says H. Hovhannisyan and adds that the government has spoilt their relationship with the public and there is no dialogue with their own people. In his opinion only the opposition has a more or less favorable contact with citizens. It’s time to conclude that the government has totally annulled their contacts with the society and only the opposition’s contact remains. And the opposition is trying to develop this contact by inviting the citizens to rallies. “At least part of the society has boycotted the referendum. If a part of the ones who boycotted the referendum showed up in our rallies we would have tens of thousand participants”, thinks the chairman of LPPA. Well, why do they participate at all? “There is a very interesting phenomenon now. By denying the current government the society refuses to join the opposition rallies. Therefore the rallies have few participants”, says H. Hovhannisyan and thinks that there are two reasons for that.
The first reason is that after November 27 the society is currently in the stage of making its own decisions. “They have made the first step and now they are making decisions. The society denied the government and now people want to see the draft of the new government”, thinks the LPPA chairman. According to the chairman as soon as the society notices the new draft of the government it will go out to the street and will demand the legal formation of the new government. “At present the society is in the mentioned stage, which I think is not going to take very long; after Christmas the society will make the right decision”, confidently says Mr. Hovhannisyan. And the second reason why the participation level is so low during the rallies is that the opposition needs “serious” transformation and the society must have the result of the opposition synthesis. It means that synthesis should take place in the opposition and the opposition itself should present to the society a structure, which will somehow contain certain ideological values and will inspire hope. By summing up the mentioned information we might conclude that the dismissal of the Marxist party from the “18+1+8” format is the first expression of the expected synthesis. According to Mr. Hovhannisyan the dismissal of the Marxist party doesn’t have any connection with the mentioned synthesis. “I haven’t personally participated in that session and don’t think that the dismissals solve any issues. I accept contradictory opinions and am against the fact of dismissing anyone for that reason,” he says. According to the opinion of the LPPA the government has lost its chance, the political forces that stimulate the government realized that they wouldn’t be able to falsify any more and couldn’t rob the country any more. “It means they have missed all their chances to do something. They have run out on the inner and outer resources as well as lost the flexibility to conduct efficient foreign and inner policy. On November 27 the cynicism of the government trespassed all the limits”, mentions Mr. Hovhannisyan and adds, “the government is collapsing and it’s a natural process because the government was not able to do serious reforms. They just got spoilt. The opposition does not agree with the results of the referendum and will fight as long as the results are considered invalid”, says H. Hovhannisyan.