Levon Ter-Petrossian Protest Demonstration in Yerevan
Following yesterday’s disputed presidential election in Armenia, Levon Ter Petrossian’s planned “victory” celebration obviously turned into a protest demonstration. Actually, most of us knew that was what it was intended as anyway as is customary after any election in Armenia. The Armenian Observer puts the number of those in attendance at 50,000 although it appeared much smaller than the estimated 40,000 who took to the streets to protest the first round of the 2003 presidential election.
Par for the course, A1 Plus inflated the numbers to an extent that makes the credibility of their reporting suspect to say the least. The pro-Ter-Petrossian news outlet estimated the number of those in attendance at a staggering 200,000 while another online news source sympathetic to the former president, RFE/RL’s Armenia Liberty, said “tens of thousands.” ArmeniaNow was more ambiguous by saying “thousands” and EurasiaNet expanded on that a little with “several thousand.”
The international media were perhaps more precise, although the demonstration was certainly larger than the 7,000 AP reports, in my opinion. The BBC put the number at “more than 15,000″ while Al Jazeera, AFP and Bloomberg put it at 20,000. Reuters put it at 15-20,000. Incidentally, I’d put is as high as 20,000 as well, but whatever the number, one thing is clear. Demonstrations look set to continue, as the New York Times reports.
“At the moment it looks quite serious,” said Boris Navasardian, president of the Yerevan Press Club, by telephone from Yerevan. “It could make some tension in the country.”
[…]
Mr. Navasardian said that the police might act to disperse the demonstrators, but that Mr. Ter-Petrosian is “a person who never recognizes that he lost,” and is unlikely to give up quickly.
Photos: Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 2008
- Published:
- 02.21.08 / 1am by Onnik
- Category:
- Armenia, Armenia Presidential Election 2008, Candidates, Demonstrations, Election Day, Opinion, Rallies, Revolution
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