How Will the Opposition Protests End? Expert Prediction

Political expert Suren Surenyants' commentary: “The opposition will invest all its resources to hold a mass rally today. It is fundamentally important for the opposition that this rally, with various components, at least does not fall short of the May 1 rally. However, what happens tomorrow is much more important, as the movement is currently in a phase of decline, and repeating the scenarios of recent days is a dead-end path that leads to the predictable conclusion of the opposition's resource depletion.

A responsible opposition can acknowledge certain successes on the platform today (for example, the positions of Yerevan in the Nagorno-Karabakh issue and Armenian-Azerbaijani dialogue have become clearer in recent days, which the opposition can register as an achievement in its struggle), publishing a political agenda and demanding political dialogue around it with the authorities. This is how any responsible opposition would behave, but I am not certain that today’s platform will be guided by such criteria.

If today the all-in strategy continues, then this process is likely to culminate in a conclusion similar to what occurred after the developments of November 9, 2020, of course, without new extraordinary elections. The reason for such a prediction is not that the people want to defend Nikol Pashinyan's government. Rather, it is simply that a change in power cannot occur in a situation where the opposition is not qualitatively better than the government. Currently, we have an opposition that is wealthy and has resources but is politically inept. In such a situation, the people do not want to step out of the mud only to find themselves in muddy waters.”