YEREVAN. – The rally of Armenia’s opposition Heritage Party leader, former FM Raffi Hovannisian—who is declared runner-up to the winner, incumbent President Serzh Sargsyan, as a result of the presidential election that was conducted on February 18, but who claims to be the real winner in the vote and who declared a hunger strike on March 10 at capital city Yerevan’s Liberty Square—was held Friday at the square, and it could have been a breakthrough, 168 Zham daily reports.   

“Yesterday’s rally was the first since Raffi Hovannisian declared a hunger strike, Serzh Sargsyan’s visit to Moscow, the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin’s advisory call to Raffi, [and European People’s Party] EPP President [Wilfried] Martens’ not less unwelcome statement. But this did not happen.      

That is, yesterday’s rally could have become a landmark from the perspective of the prospect of the movement.

Overall, the number of rally participants is one of the important criteria for assessing the ‘effectiveness’ of a rally, and the ‘rally energy’ likewise depends on this. But both of them were absent in yesterday’s rally.   

Raffi has not yet found the formula for transforming the protest from a lyrical into a political struggle. And to seek that formula, he is using up not solely the resources of faith and expectation of thousands of people, but also the resources of his own health,” 168 Zham writes.