Armenian President Robert Kocharian accused the opposition of trying to seize power on Saturday as tens of thousands protested for a fourth day demanding a presidential election be overturned.
Some 50,000 supporters of opposition leader Levon Ter-Petrosian gathered in the central Freedom Square, waving Armen-ian flags and chanting "Levon" and "Fight to the End."
It was the fourth day of protests against the results of last Tuesday's presidential poll, officially won by Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian.
The protests have been peaceful, but Kocharian warned the government was prepared to take action.
"I view these actions as an attempt to seize power," Kocharian told a meeting of senior army and police officials, a statement said.
"No organization can put itself above the law and Constitution and practice illegal activities," he said. "Our actions will be decisive and firm to maintain stability and the constitutional order of the country."
Several thousand demonstrators marched on Saturday on the headquarters of national public radio to protest what they allege has been a lack of coverage of their campaign.
"They are not reporting anything that is happening in our country," said Lyudmila Sarkisian, who led the march and read out a letter of protest in front of the radio headquarters, which was surrounded by police.
Activists have set up about two dozen tents in the square and several hundred have camped out overnight, huddling around campfires to keep warm in sub-zero temperatures. Many of the most committed activists are unemployed men hoping that a change in government would mean new jobs.
Official results from the election gave 52.9 percent of the vote to Sarkisian, hand-picked to succeed Kocharian, who is obliged to step down after his second term.
Ter-Petrosian, who trailed with 21.5 percent, has demanded a rerun of the "shameful" election, alleging widespread irregularities in the poll.
Observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe described the election as "mostly" in line with international standards.
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ￥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
‘HUMAN NEGLIGENCE’: The fire is believed to have been caused by someone who was visiting an ancestral grave and accidentally started the blaze, the acting president said Deadly wildfires in South Korea worsened overnight, officials said yesterday, as dry, windy weather hampered efforts to contain one of the nation’s worst-ever fire outbreaks. More than a dozen different blazes broke out over the weekend, with Acting South Korean Interior and Safety Minister Ko Ki-dong reporting thousands of hectares burned and four people killed. “The wildfires have so far affected about 14,694 hectares, with damage continuing to grow,” Ko said. The extent of damage would make the fires collectively the third-largest in South Korea’s history. The largest was an April 2000 blaze that scorched 23,913 hectares across the east coast. More than 3,000
RSS