Yerevan hosts many-thousand-strong oppositional rally

Today, the Freedom Square in Yerevanhas hosted the final pre-election rally of the oppositional Armenian National Congress (ANC). The elections to the National Assembly of Armenia will take place on May 6.

The organizers of the rally saw its main mission in ensuring free and fair elections, which will launch a change of government. Despite the huge crowd, there was no police near the Freedom Square.

Grant Bagratyan, an ANC activist and former Prime Minister, said that the main task of the ANC in economy would be a total liquidation of monopolies, which will create about 100,000 new jobs and prerequisites to increase the average wage and pensions and decrease tuition fees at universities.

Nikol Pashinyan, the editor-in-chief of the oppositional newspaper "Armenian Time", who runs for the parliament in the seventh constituency, believes that "complete eradication of the oligarchs" is a major mission of the ANC.

Meanwhile, Ruben Torosyan, one of the participants of the rally, expressed confidence that the upcoming elections wouldn't do "without law violations and falsifications."

"What expectations can be from elections in this country? They always faked the outcomes; they'll do it this time either. I'm tired of all that; tired to hope and then get disillusioned. Why should I go to the polls if my vote means nothing?"asked Anna Mnatsakanyan, another activist.

On the contrary, Ashot Petrosyan believes that voters should go to the polls. "In any case we should go and vote, because if we don't, we'll have no true picture of who is who among our political forces. Consequently, at the next elections people won't be able to make a good political analysis and, respectively, make the right choice," he told the"Caucasian Knot" correspondent.