Yesterday I attended the Artashes Geghamian rally, which was suppose to be at the Matenadaran, but for reasons unknown to me, it was held a block away in front of Kino Nairi.

For those that don’t know who Artashes Geghamian is, he was the person who came in 3rd during the presidential election and someone whose name I keep hearing from the natives as the person who could really lead this country properly if allowed to come to power. From the way he was talking and the look on his face, the first impression I got was that he seems to be very sincere with what he was saying and was publicly saying many of the things I have written on this site about corruption, Kocharian, Sarkissian and the rest of our problems.

Being that it was a very cold, I was impressed with the turnout. The attendees for the most part were older persons, but mixed in with them I could feel a very strong presents of the KGB, who when I walked in, I got some very dirty looks from and also there were quite a few criminal looking persons, who looked like they just got our of jail. These criminal looking types, I have never ever seen before in Armenia anywhere. On every side of the rally, were police with vans parked a block away with police waiting with riot-gear.

Being that it was cold, I kept my jacket zipped up and being that there were these new criminal types around, I also kept my pockets zipped up so as not to loose my camera.

Geghamian spoke well and the crowd for the most part reacted as you would expect. At one point, someone threw an egg at Geghamian, I’m guessing one of the criminal types, at which Geghamian calmed the crowd and called to the police standing by, who did nothing.

A few minutes later, I could hear yelling behind Geghamian. IT sounded to be someone who was very upset, but I have no idea as to what this mans protest was about.

I moved around the crowd trying to find a good spot to hear what Geghamian was saying, as his voice amplifying equipment was inadequate for the hard of hearing. He was standing on the top of a van with a couple of speakers.

I took some pictures and as I did, I was getting dirty looks from the KGB looking people in the crowd, so I kept on moving and at one point a chill came over me, which I took as a sign to leave.

As I was walking away, Geghamian made an announcement that the next meeting with be on the 9th.

I had heard that troops from Artsakh had been sent to Armenia to deal with the opposition and when I spoke with someone there, I was told that they were gathering those up that had no problem to stand up against Armenians, but had not yet sent them. This same thing happened during the elections last year and this time since the people have had enough of the Kocharian government, I think we may see blood spill in the Streets of Yerevan very soon.

As I had said before, if Kocharian and Sarkissian use the army to suppress the people from asserting their democratic rights so they can retain their power, they and those that go along with their plan to do so will pay dearly, as the Armenian constitution clearly states that the army may not be used for internal security purposes.