On 18 February, the Armenian National Congress held a major protest drawing between 5,000 and 10,000 in the city center of Yerevan. The protesters, including Ter-Petrosyan, complained of low wages, unemployment, inflation, corruption, and a falling quality of living. Speakers at the rally also invoked the specter of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, and Ter-Petrosyan compared the Sargsyan administration to those fallen regimes. "The plight of our people is no better than the plight of the peoples of those countries, and Armenia's regime is no less dictatorial and hated than the regimes in those countries," the former president said. He urged the government to resign and called for an uprising similar to those seen in Arab countries near Armenia. Ter-Petrosyan also called on street vendors and others already organizing in protest of government policies to "politicize" their rallies and join with the national opposition in calling for sweeping changes.