It’s just amusing to see the pot calling the kettle black.

Anyway, what’s more interesting for me is that the figure given for those attending last Friday’s rally is 10-15,000 and not the 35-40,000 that A1 Plus were reporting after the rally was over.

Still, it has more of a pro-opposition tone than not which is probably what you’re getting at.

Armenian Government Moves against Ex-President

Official media campaign waged against former president as he launches new leadership bid.

By Diana Markosian in Yerevan (CRS No. 417 01-Nov-07)
After a nine-year silence, former Armenian leader Levon Ter-Petrosian declared on October 26 that he would be running for president in next year’s elections.

In response, the current administration has moved swiftly to undermine Ter-Petrosian’s campaign. Police detained several of his supporters three days before he made his announcement.

Ter-Petrosian, who was Armenian president from 1991 to 1998, announced his plans at a rally on Yerevan’s Freedom Square attended by 10,000-15,000 people, ending weeks of speculation about his political comeback ahead of a presidential poll due next February.

The current president, Robert Kocharian, who is serving out the final months of his second and final term, mocked his predecessor’s ambitions. In televised remarks during a visit to the southern town of Kapan, he said that Ter-Petrosian and his Armenian National Movement party had ruined the country’s economy and were seeking “new opportunities for robbery”.

“If there’s anyone who doesn’t remember it, we will remind them,” he said, grinning.

[…]

Public television has already begun to broadcast negative coverage of Ter-Petrosian. A Sunday evening programme called 360 Degrees took viewers back to the former president’s time in office, when the country was undergoing an acute economic crisis. For 22 minutes, the program showed gloomy black-and-white footage of those times, reminding viewers of a series of political murders that had been committed. The blood shown on the screen was made more vividly red for effect.

Several television reports about the October 26 rally showed pictures of Freedom Square half-empty, apparently using footage of scenes shot before the demonstration started.

The organisers of the rally told IWPR that almost all television channels had refused to air a video announcement about the forthcoming event, even though it had been sanctioned by the authorities.

[…]

One provincial television station broke ranks and gave airtime to Ter-Petrosian’s comeback.

Vahan Khachatrian, director of the independent television Gala, based in Armenia’s second largest city Gyumri, said his company first came under pressure after it aired a statement by Ter-Petrosian to mark Armenian Independence Day on September 21.

http://www.iwpr.net/EN-crs-f-340306