Look on the situation a little bit broader - in late 80-ies, the taboo on LTP and Karabakh Committee was much more stronger, than now.
But rallies gather much more people.
Why the crowd now smaller, than in 80-ies?

Also, various people I know living in my area as well as other parts of the city did not know about the rally although this was one or two people, admittedly. Hard to say if the lack of leaflets in parts of the city made a difference, but I’d guess given the heavy saturation of leaflets in Komitas for the first two, and the total lack for the third, it must have.

Can’t say, for sure, but it seems logical.

Rallies are stagnating not because of confiscated leaflets.

Everyone knows this and this is obvious!

One remark regarding the attendance: you know, later I figured out that it is incorrect to compare the last two rallies and the turnouts. Why? Simply because at the second rally the people were artificially (because of the stage constructed in the middle of the square) held back and they were standing really dense. Now when I look at the photo at http://forum.openarmenia.com/uploads//post-77-1197266791.jpg, I see that people stand really densely and that perhaps the turnout was almost similar…

Anyway, the stage was a confusing factor.

[…] I wish I would see less, or no… I wish I would not see at all posters of ‘Levon the King’ (like the one below) during his rallies. This is very reminiscent of the cult of personality we do not want to get close to. ‘King’ has no place in future democratic Armenia, as I would like to see my country. I hope people from Levon’s team will not encourage this sort of messages in future.

What does occur to me now, however, is that while we’re all left in front of Ter Petrosian, A1 Plus appear to be granted unrestricted access right next to the speakers.

Of course, we know the reason for that, but anyway. Still, main point is that the security redeemed themselves this time and Pashinian even made a point of seeing if I was happy with arrangements.

As I gestured to him in response to his thumbs up, and as I said to Aramazd later, I was. Thanks to them for listening and acting. That’s something I was very pleased to discover.

Vahagn Says:
December 9, 2007 at 3:37 pm

I saw dozens of posters ALL OVER the place. In fact, many of them are still up after the event. Also, some young people were handing out the posters with DVDs (I assume, with LTP’s earlier speeches) in the street. So, it was hard not to know when the rally was going to take place.

At any rate, the rally did attract less people this time and maybe the leaflets weren’t the reason for that.

The poster in Armenian reads, “Levon VII: Armenian King,” with a reference to Cilician Armenia’s last king Levon (Leo) VI who found refuge in France as his Muslim foes destroyed the last Armenian kingdom.

It is quite ironic that the romantic nationalists who support Ter-Petrosyan call the former president a monarch, not realizing that the last thing Armenia needs is another king - which would be the case if either Levon Ter-Petrosyan or Serzh Sargsyan are elected. The Ter-Petrosyan “monarchship” was clearly demonstrated in the 1996 elections when he was celebrating his “victory” before the votes were even being counted. And I can almost guarantee to you a Serzh Sargsyan “victory” for the upcoming elections.

Armenia’s politics has never upset me as much as it does today. The more time passes the worse it becomes with former morons wanting to replace current morons.

And I think Armenia needs to change it constitution so that a president can only serve two terms in a lifetime. Otherwise, we may see lots of monarchs striving for return.