Certainly, it doesn’t look likely that Impeachment or the People’s Party can do this. That said, I’ll wait before passing a final judgement on that until I see how many people they manage to pull this evening alongside Aram Karapetyan and Aram Sargsyan. If they stand any chance at all, Liberty Square has to be full of 10-15,000 people.

10-15,000 people as most of us count them, that is — and not as A1 Plus reports when only a few hudnred turn out instead. Support for Aram Sargsyan seems high among part of the electorate, though, so let’s see. Back to OYP, however, I have to say two things.

a) OYP no longer have the Ministry of Education and the press has been full of stories about schoolteachers working for Republicans.

b) The audience in Shengavit seemed totally behind Baghdasarian and quite genuine. There were also no buses anywhere to be seen indicating that these guys probably came from Shengavit. Same was true in Davidashen.

Anyway.

This however, doesn’t really reflect their popularity, because elections are not about members of party voting (except for Bargavach), but getting the people, who haven’t oriented yet, to vote for the party. No matter what they say, this scandal will hurt Orinats Yerkir.

Like you have said on your blog before, Onnik, the pro-Russian moods are still dominant among the voters in Armenia, and the spy scandal with the involvement of the British, whom Armenians have never trusted, is definitely going to hurt the party. Which is good… I really openly and intensely dislike Orinats Yerkir!!!

but I’ll say that the security around Baghdasarian seems more serious than around TSARUKIAN or even Serzh Sarkisyan

From photographing two Orinats Yerkir meetings so far this campaign, today’s rally in terms of security was significantly different than about 2 weeks ago in Davidashen when there was no security at all. I also noticed that those bodyguards were keeping a careful eye on me as I moved around the podium during Baghdasarian’s speech which focused more on policy and criticizing that of the government rather than playing up the British Embassy scandal. Moreover, on Saturday night when I ran into the party’s Foreign Affairs spokesperson, they at least say they are taking the expose seriously and consider it an attempt to counter growing popularity of the party.

And if the two rallies I’ve seen are anything to go by, I think both some pro-governmental AND opposition parties should be worried by Orinats Yerkir. Certainly, along with Aram Z. Sarkisyan and Nikol Pashinian, Baghdasarian is a dynamic speaker in front of a crowd. Probably, if those opposition representatices were to unite along with a few others such as Raffi Hovannisian there could be a viable opposition able to motivate disgruntled citizens better than say Demirchian or Geghamian in 2003 and 2004. What’s interesting, therefore, anti-Orinats Yerkir sentiment among some opposition groups as well as civil society representatives.

Anyway.