At least 20,000 supporters of Armenian opposition candidate Robert Kocharyan packed a central square in the capital Yerevan on Friday, ahead of snap parliamentary polls this weekend.
Armenia’s reformist Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan called the early election in an effort to defuse a political crisis after a disastrous war with Azerbaijan last year.
He is hoping to renew his mandate but is in a tight race with former president Kocharyan.
On Friday evening supporters of Pashinyan’s main rival, including decorated war veterans, massed in the capital’s Republic Square waving flags and chanting “Kocharyan!”
Kocharyan appeared to have mobilised about the same number of supporters — or even slightly more — than his rival managed at a rally the day before, according to estimates by AFP reporters who witnessed both events.
The rally for Kocharyan, who was in power between 1998 and 2008 and counts Russian leader Vladimir Putin among his friends, was the last campaign event ahead of the snap parliamentary elections on Sunday.
Polls show Pashinyan’s party neck-and-neck with Kocharyan’s electoral bloc, and political analysts say the election result is hard to predict.
Many at Friday’s rally said they could no longer trust Pashinyan, who came to power in 2018 on pledges to oust old elites but led the small South Caucasus country into a war with arch-enemy Azerbaijan that claimed more than 6,000 lives.
“We lived well when Kocharyan was president,” said one supporter, Emma Khachaturyan, 50.
“Pashinyan is a traitor,” she added, referring to the prime minister’s controversial agreement that ceded swathes of territory to Azerbaijan after the six-week conflict over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh last year.
Businessman and former soldier Mger Palyan, 47, said Kocharyan understood the needs of the military.
“I was in the army when he was president. He always worked and was true to his word,” Palyan said.
A poll released Friday by MPG, a polling group affiliated with Gallup International Association, showed Kocharyan’s bloc leading narrowly with 28.7 percent to 25.2 percent for Pashinyan’s party.
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