Pages

Saturday 6 September 2008

Pre-football match Yerevan: 3 hrs to go...


Turkey's president Gul has just arrived in Yerevan. Small groups of protesters from nationalist ARF-Dashnaktsutyun party (mostly, teenagers, children, many of them bused in from the regions, and occasional adults) could be seen in downtown Yerevan along the route of presidential cortège.

In the meantime, IA Regnum reports that as of midday 6 September, only 16 000 out of 53 000 tickets for the match were sold out. According to my sources, yesterday local authorities in Yerevan started distributing number of tickets for free.

I am off to the stadium. Go Armenia!!! Excitement!!! :)))

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Their party is in the governing coalition and supports Serj Sargsyan but they come out to protest the government decision and Serj Sargsyan's guest?
It is ludicrous.

Anonymous said...

Parties agree to co-govern in a coalition after the divisive election season, and people mock the different parties saying they don't stand for anything.

And now, on a point of legitimate difference, there is a protest in parallel with an invitation, and you call it ludicrous.

I don't see anything wrong with the protest/invitation.

Anonymous said...

The Mickey mouse party , ay?

Anonymous said...

One would suppose that the issue of Armenian-Turkish relations as well as inviting Gul to Armenia is so fundamental to what the Dashnaks stand for that them resigning from the coalition government is the kind of thing a party would do if the conviction is there.

However, they haven't, and I daresay the Armenian-Turkish border will be open long before the ARF-D are prepared to make a stand on a matter of principle. I'm sure some Dashnaks in the Diaspora must surely be asking some questions now if they weren't already.