Yesterday Levon Ter-Petrosyan and his supporters organized their first post-election rally in Yerevan.
It was planned to start the rally near the Matenadaran at 3 p.m., but on February 19 Ter-Petrosyan’s campaign office informed that due to the huge capacities of fraud it was suggested to start the rally at 11 a.m. People were coming to the Matenadaran early in the morning. The authorities had got “prepared” for the rally as well. The government blocked the roads from the regions to Yerevan early in the morning and there were no transports in the central part of Yerevan either. Despite these impediments there were many people at the rally, which started at 3 p.m. The territory in between the Matenadaran and Nairi cinema house was overcrowded. According to the organizers, the number of the participants exceeded 200 thousand, but according to the police, that number was around 12000. During the rally the organizers read the announcement of Ter-Petrosyan’s pre-election campaign writing that there have been many violations, fraudulence, cases of kidnapping, massive scuffles, terror, ballot stuffing and other violations, due to which they did not recognize the results of the election. To note, according to the preliminary information of the CEC, presidential candidate Serzh Sargsyan has received 52,8% of votes and was elected president. As for Levon Ter-Petrosyan, according to the preliminary information of the CEC he has received 21,5% and occupies the second place. The speakers of the rally assured that their candidate, Levon Ter-Petrosyan had won the presidential election and that they were not going to step back or give up and would protect their votes and victory. Levon Ter-Petrosyan made a speech as well. He said that despite many violations such as fraudulence, ballot stuffing and kidnapping “the people’s candidate” had won. According to him, the results were changed after 8 p.m., during the vote count process, which took place in dark conditions in many precinct centers. The first president stressed that there had not been any cooperation between governments and criminal groups in any other countries as we saw during the presidential election of February 19 in Armenia. “No one can stop us build final rule of law in this country. We have a certain action plan. Let Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan, who are sitting in their offices and watching our rally, not suspect that we will reach final victory based on our action plan,” Ter-Petrosyan said and added, “Don’t think that they can misbalance our positions. We will be very calm, quiet, confident, and we are not suspicious about our final victory. This time we are not going to step back as in 1998, 2003 and 2008 and will celebrate our final victory for sure”. After the rally they walked through the central avenue, Amiryan and Nalbandyan streets to the Liberty square of Yerevan. During that rally the participants were repeating the words “Le-von” and “Ser-zhik get of the power”. By the way, policemen had closed the way near the government building and told the rally participants to walk through another muddy way. There was a small conflict with policemen, as a result of which the policemen stepped back and allowed them walk through the pedestrian pavement as well. There were policemen and security officers near the CEC, NS and Police buildings as well. When the participants walked to the Liberty square they had to wait for the others to arrive for about 50 minutes in order to continue their event. The square was overcrowded. The rally participants were quite decisive and active. They were demanding from the organizers to walk to Baghramyan street and solve the problem there without any delay. The speakers were trying to convince them that it was not the time for that yet, but the participants were repeating “now-now”. The rally continued till 8:30 p.m. and Levon Ter-Petrosyan made a closing speech. Concerning the participants’ demand to go to Baghramyan avenue just at that time he said, “This is very serious politics and I know it very well what to do”. The first president said that there was no suspect that they would reach their goal through the most clever, correct and decisive steps. He suggested the participants to go home and return the next day at 3 p.m. “You will see a very important event,” the first president said. He ensured that they would not step back. “We will struggle till the end, thus let’s struggle till the end, struggle till the end…” emphasized Ter-Petrosyan. He also said that Ambassadors of some European countries had told him that the president had said that he had been negotiating with Ter-Petrosyan but it was not true. The moderator of the rally, Nikol Pashinyan petitioned the participants to put on coats not to get cold because there would be an important event.