Shimmer

A rally participant cheering “Levon Levon Levon”.

I find it interesting to observe the run-ups to the presidential elections in February. Curious as I am, and slightly above average politically interested, I went to the second opposition political meeting on Friday.

I went there purely out of curiosity to observe, not motivated out of support for the political opposition or any other political preference. And I will try to make my observations as neutral as possible.

More energetic

Compared to the last rally I felt the attending crowd had a lot more energy this time, at least in the front of the crowd, where I was standing; the people around me were often cheering and discussing Levon’s statements. I picked up words once in a while, and once in a while the two ladies behind me responded with “jist e”, which means “that’s right”. A kind young man around the age of 25, gave me some translations and also expressed his clear support for the opposition and his hope for the upcoming elections: “I think we can make it this time.”

A view of the stage, illustrates where I stood in the crowd.

It has to be taken into consideration that while I was standing towards the back at the last rally, I was now less than 15 meters from the stage. The people in front are of course more energetic, and this has influenced my impression of the rally.
The Armenian Observer Blog has an interesting comment on this same issue:

The crowd was also more inspired – responding to the speech very enthusiastically, at least in the tight center where I was standing, and for a moment I felt inspired and elated.
[…]
Now, when I soberly view the videos I’ve made during the rally and read the text of the speech, I can’t seem to understand, why was I feeling so good about him? LTP didn’t say anything new about the accusations brought against him.

Larger crowd, more people

There were more people at this rally than the last one. The crowd was denser and it extended further, but we also have to take into consideration the space occupied by the stage and the other platform. I have no intention of giving estimates of my own; I have absolutely no experience with estimating crowdsizes and there are more than enough estimates out there allready. All I can say is that there were more people than last time.

I would like to qoute a comment made by Onnik Krikorian on the previously mentioned post on The Armenian Observer Blog:

I think it’s pretty impossible to accurately estimate the size of crowds and we can only speak in range. Therefore, I’m quite happy with the range 10-15,000 or more.

Anyway, the main thing is that we’re more accurate than those writing 20,000 or god forbid, Pashinian’s 85,000. Still, could have been worse. I heard one guy say it was 100,000

Onnik Krikorian also wrote a post, The numbers game, after the last rally summing up the different estimates. I enjoyed this breakdown, (not only because he quouted my previous post), so please leave a comment if you stumble over a similar breakdown for this rally.

The End

I enjoy following the runnups to the presidential election, and once in a while I will take the time to comment on it, like I have done now.

Since I am now publishing this four days after the actual event most things worth mentioning have already been covered by other blogs, and I would rather refer to others, than repeat. Peaking into the Armenia section of Global Voices Online will give you a fairly good picture of what’s going on.