YEREVAN. – There are several hundred thousand people who are in terrible emotional dissatisfaction, but there are also a million people who are dissatisfied with [PM] Nikol Pashinyan, but don’t have the enthusiasm to participate in all this because they are broken; one has to be able to make these people take to the streets for this movement to be in a impressive extent. Armenia’s ex-PM Vazgen Manukyan, who is now opposition Homeland Salvation Movement’s candidate for PM, said this in a conversation with reporters at Liberty Square on Friday.

"Nikol Pashinyan will not step down on his own for several reasons. First, he is very afraid of what he will answer to next. Second, upstarts have entered power, they enjoy [it]; they will not give up power easily. But in that case, his [Pashinyan’s] support bases need to be broken, ruined. And who are his support bases? It is the [majority] My Step faction [in parliament]; we must ‘work’ with My Step. Some [of them] are high-ranking police officers who cruelly treated the people," Manukyan said.

And referring to the recent temporary halt by the opposition, he said that its benefit was that he saw that the number of people who did not imagine the situation in the country before, but now do, has increased. "Surveys also show that the number of mindful people is increasing [in Armenia]; people are coming out of the shock. And the [aforesaid opposition] movement discussed within itself all that it has done, learned lessons, and with the rally on the 20th of the month [of February], it will continue the rallies with much greater vigor," Vazgen Manukyan added.