WikiLeaks-Armenia No 74
2008-02-28
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 YEREVAN 000164
SUBJECT: LTP AND SARGSIAN HOLD DUELING RALLIES; LTP WINS HANDS DOWN
Classified By: Joseph Pennington, for reasons 1.4 (b and d).
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SUMMARY
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¶1. (C) Ex-president Levon Ter-Petrossian and president-elect Prime Minister Serge Sargsian held competing rallies blocks away from each other in downtown Yerevan the afternoon of February 26. While Sargsian’s first post-election rally drew approximately 60,000 to 70,000 bussed-in supporters, LTP’s seventh post-election rally in as many days drew 85,000 to 100,000, his largest so far. Thousands of Sargsian participants later defected to LTP’s rally up the street, where they were rapturously received with chants of “Unite, Unite.” Some of the bussed-in Sargsian supporters who joined the LTP rally appeared visibly dazed by the magnitude of LTP’s support, which, because of a virtual media blackout, has been grossly misportrayed by national media. END SUMMARY.
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SARGSIAN BUSES IN 60,000 PLUS
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¶2. (C) As Emboffs arrived at Prime Minster Serge Sargsian’s first post-election rally held in Yerevan’s Republic Square, hundreds of would-be Sargsian supporters were headed in the opposite election, up the street to the Freedom Square rally of ex-President Levon Ter-Petrossian, whose protest of Armenia’s February 19 presidential election was entering its seventh straight day. Supporters at Sargsian’s rally appeared to be mainly middle-aged men and women, with virtually no youth in sight. Banners at the rally showed people had come from the outlying regions of Yerevan, though one group Emboffs spoke with had come all the way from Javakheti, Georgia. In a scene reminiscent of mass mobilizations during the Soviet era, banner slogans read “Farmers for Serzh,” “Doctors for Serzh,” and even “Tuberculosis Polyclinic Employees for Serzh.”
¶3. (C) People whom Emboffs surveyed at the rally responded differently on the reason for their attendance, depending on how Emboffs identified themselves (either from the US Embassy or simply from America). People who knew they were talking to diplomats said they came willingly to the rally, “to defend their vote” for Sargsian and paid their own way to Yerevan. One group of women told Emboffs “to mind their own business” when asked why they came to the rally, barking at the female FSN translator, “Why did YOU come?” On the other hand, most men and women who were speaking to Americans said they were obliged to attend the rally by their supervisors and had been bused to the event. (NOTE: A visiting EUR/ACE humanitarian assistance official who had meetings planned in the northern cities of Sevan and Dilijan the day of the rally found out upon arrival that two of his meetings had fallen through due to the compulsory rally attendance of his interlocutors in those distant cities. END NOTE.)
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60K TO TWO K IN EIGHT MINUTES …
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¶4. (C) Emboffs timed the departure of would-be Sargsian supporters from the capacious Republic Square once the Prime Minister concluded his largely conciliatory, 30-minute address. Within the space of eight minutes, approximately 95 percent of the approximately 60,000-70,000 crowd bolted the rain-drizzled square for their waiting buses and rides home. Only 2,000 held on in the drizzling rain, kept there by popular Armenian pop stars who took the stage after the Prime Minister. A bemused bystander approached Emboffs, and when Emboff asked him why he was grinning, he incredulously noted, “Did you see that — how fast everyone left the square?”
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… AS THOUSANDS DEFECT TO LTP RALLY UP THE STREET
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¶5. (C) Emboffs then headed up the street towards Freedom Square where supporters of ex-president Levon Ter-Petrossian were holding the seventh pro-LTP rally in as many days. LTP supporters exuberantly greeted the thousands of newcomers to the rally with chants, “Come, Come, Unite, Unite” (NOTE: Emboffs estimated at least 2,000 arrived at the square with them, but this was already 20 minutes after the end of the Sargsian rally. END NOTE.) Would-be Sargsian supporters crossed the street, shared embraces with LTP supporters, and then turned back towards new arriving waves to encourage them Emboffs spotted several Sargsian rally participants actively engaged in this encouragement. The influx of Sargsian rally participants resulted in the interruption of traffic for over an hour, with a key Yerevan artery, Tumanian Street, cut off adjacent to Freedom Square. Inside the square, LTP supporters cheered the defectors on, as the crowd swelled to 85,000-100,000 supporters. Some of the would-be Sargsian supporters appeared veritably dazed by the magnitude of the swelling rally, while dozens others took out their cell phone cameras to capture the moment.
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SARGSIAN BANNER ALMOST SPARKS CONFRONTATION
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¶6. (C) As Emboffs watched the Sargsian defectors unite with LTP supporters across Tumanian Street, the assembled crowd began to direct its attention to a three-story-high election poster of Sargsian hanging on the facade of an upscale restaurant. After ten minutes of raised fists, and shouts of “Let’s get rid of Serzh,” a contingent of 20 nearby police moved in front of the restaurant to deter the protesters. Initially greeted with whistles and cat calls, the police were then applauded and cheered on, to chants of “Unite With Us, Police.” The protesters occupied Tumanian Street for another 45 minutes until a speaker at the rally encouraged them to conduct a downtown march, which about 25,000 then did. LTP supporters were also treated at this time to the playing of the theme song of Armenia’s 1988 Karabakh movement, which brought temporary silence to the assembled throngs, as a speaker got people to chant the movement’s motto, “Free, Independent Armenia.”
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ATMOSPHERICS AT LTP RALLY
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¶7. (C) This was by far LTP’s strongest outing yet in the number of mobilized supporters, exceeding his Sunday, February 17 pre-election rally in the same Freedom Square. Emboffs noticed a greater number of people from the regions in attendance, from both southern and northern Armenia. Some said they had traveled to Yerevan over the weekend, and were staying with friends, and would continue to come to the rallies until LTP prevailed. The number of tents in Freedom Square mushroomed from a few to approximately 30, with several sporting operational stovepipes through the roofs. Banners were in greater number, and the rally had a festive, bohemian air to it. (NOTE: One of the banners read, “ODIHR: BE FAIR” in reference to the overall positive, preliminary assessment by the OSCE election-monitoring organization, which many disappointed Armenians have found to be wide of the mark. END NOTE.) The demographic was noticeably younger at LTP’s rally, but many middle-aged people were also in attendance.
¶8. (C) When Emboffs surveyed people in the crowd, they were swarmed by LTP sympathizers seeking to share their election-day horror stories (of ballot stuffing, beatings, non-intervention of police, etc). They also said they were appalled by the post-election media blackout of LTP’s protest rallies, saying that national TV had lied to people claiming only 100 supporters had come out to Freedom Square in support of LTP. One Yerevan citizen at the rally said she defied her institute director’s order to attend the Sargsian rally, and that police had detained her son and other students inside their university during a previous LTP rally. Emboffs visited two university campuses before the rally to verify reports of riot police being stationed outside to deter student participation in the event. Both campuses had approximately 10-20 riot and regular police outside, with numerous police vehicles parked in the street. When queried by Emboffs at Yerevan State University’s (YSU) main campus why they were there, police — including ranking officers — refused to make a statement, walked away from Emboffs, and acted as if nobody had addressed them. A police officer at a YSU affiliate down the street said they had been dispatched to “preserve order.” A student at the scene said police had arrived the day before, had engaged with students and told them not to attend the rally, but were overall non-aggressive.
¶9. (C) Several businessmen at the LTP rally, who were members of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation-Dashnaktsutyun (ARF) whose presidential candidate finished a distant fourth in the February 19 poll, told Emboffs the “dirty” presidential election was to blame for the protest. They also said they thought the OSCE’s quick rush to recognize the election results had contributed to people’s dissatisfaction with the situation, and actually contributed to the ongoing protests. One of the Dashnak supporters solemnly shared that if Armenians accepted the initial election results, they would essentially “abandon” themselves to a “future of feudalism” in their country.
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COMMENT
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¶10. (C) If it was president-elect Sargsian’s goal to offset the ongoing LTP rallies with a show of force of his own, he outright failed. In fact, it appears he did himself more ill than good, giving LTP and their diehard 30,000 cadre a new influx of thousands of jaded, would-be Sargsian supporters bussed into Yerevan by the ruling regime itself. Where previous LTP rallies appeared to be stagnating in terms of number of supporters, today’s lopsided duel with Sargsian’s contrived event appears to have given the LTP campaign a much-needed infusion of energy, regional support, and new credibility with the Armenian street. It remains to be seen, though, how LTP will exploit this showdown, and how Sargsian will react to arguably the greatest PR mistake of the increasingly tense post-election period. Within a matter of hours, today’s dueling rallies visibly jeopardized Sargsian’s cultivated image of invincibility.
END COMMENT.
PENNINGTON
