2008 Armenian Presidential Election Protests - Opposition Response

Opposition Response

Opposition leaders who organized the rally disavowed and condemned March 1's looting of dozens of a nearby supermarket and burning of parked cars, blaming them on government "provocateurs." “We have nothing to do with that,” said Nikol Pashinian, an opposition leader. “The authorities themselves are destabilizing the situation.”

During his March 11 news conference, Ter-Petrosyan alleged that government agents provoked the unrest. "Not even one car had been scratched prior to March 1. So what happened?" Ter-Petrosyan said, according to a report distributed by the Regnum news agency. "Provocateurs went after the protesters with clubs. … That was the reason the situation spiraled out of control, although it was brilliantly managed by authorities."

During the weekend of March 15–16, Ter-Petrosyan and his opposition allies remaining at large held a meeting for the first time since the March 1 government attack, and said they will continue to work for regime change in Armenia by "legal and democratic means." Ter-Petrosyan's office said that the participants of the meeting "reaffirmed their determination to fight against the kleptocratic system." During the week of March 10, the Ter-Petrosyan's representatives requested permission from Yerevan mayor's office to hold a rally on March 21 (the day after the anticipated end of emergency rule); this request has been rejected.

Raffi Hovannisian's Zharangutyun party said in a statement that "the schism between the Armenian people and its government continues to expand," that the presidential ballot was fraudulent and that Armenians had a legitimate right to dispute its official results in the streets. It said the March 1 bloodshed resulted from the break-up of non-stop protests in Yerevan’s Freedom Square staged by the Ter-Petrosyan camp. "The unconscionability displayed on February 19 and the brutality used to protect it on March 1 remain unresolved issues," said the statement. "No state of emergency, accompanied as it is by an aggressive, one-sided ‘public information’ vertical which deepens the public divide rather than healing it, will succeed in securing the collective amnesia of state and society."