“Many are now wondering why the Armenian authorities are not dispersing the Marshal Bagramian Avenue demonstration in the morning or afternoon hours when the number of people present on the avenue is quite small,” writes “Haykakan Zhamanak.” “Various theories are being suggested in connection with this non-dispersal. Each of them has the right to exist. But we believe the decisive factor here is that the break-up of the demonstration there on June 23 caused a serious public backlash and, as a result, the campaign against the electricity price hike only intensified, developing into a very serious civil process.”
“Zhamanak” believes that the continuing sit-in on Marshal Bagramian Avenue testifies to the working “pulse of Armenia.” “On the other hand, that pulse is not strong enough for Armenia’s resilience,” writes the paper. “And we need resilience not tomorrow but today, all the time.”
“168 Zham” reports that attendance at the nonstop demonstration in the Armenian capital has steadily declined for the past three days. “It’s not that most participants of the civic movement have been satisfied by President Serzh Sarkisian’s [June 27] speech and feel that their demands have been met,” says the paper. “It’s just that the protest movement has been driven by inertia for the past several days.”
“Hayots Ashkhar” says the dwindling number of protesters on the Yerevan avenue was “totally predictable.” “In any case, the protest movement is nominally going on,” says the paper. “But in terms of substance, it is simply melting away, dying down, like an ice cream in the summer heat.”
(Naira Bulghadarian)