Dirty, cheating, lying democracy...

“Our generation has lost,” Kamran said to a dear Iranian friend.

“Yes, we have.”

…

Our friend has lived in Iran all these years, trying to make a life for himself, terminally optimistic about the future of post-revolutionary Iran. Kamran, on the other hand, left during the early 80s when internal purges began and the war with Iraq was just getting under way. “I felt so bad for my friends and family,” Kamran said to our friend. “It got to the point that I could not read their letters anymore. When they wrote me about the war, how could I respond with my adventures at a café? Or the beautiful girl I met the night before? I could never be free from feeling that somehow I did not deserve this life.”

…

Funny that despite all of Iran’s problems they are currently engaged in the very messy act of building a democracy. What we all tend to forget is that it is indeed a messy process. Democracy/free speech are not neat little products as compact and clean as iPods or toasters. It does not come wrapped up like a gift. It is easy to dismiss the democratic process in Iran because of the religious element, candidate elimination, vote tampering, corruption, and our disapproval of the results. This does not mean that it should be dismissed. I keep pointing people to the last city council elections in Iran and how voters sent a clear message to the current government or Iran. That was democracy in action. It’s not a nice process. It’s just the best of the worst as Churchill would say.

References:

Podcast of Vali Nasr’s talk to the Commonwealth Club (listen to it!)

My post on Tehran’s city council elections

More on the city council elections:

From Open Democracy

From Payvand

From CBC

From Kamangir
…

Tehran City Council Elections

Tehran is a big and sprawling city with intractable traffic and seemingly random road closures. The metro will take you from Mirdamad station, which was once in a far northern section of Tehran and is now close to its center, to the far southern reaches of the city where Tehran's huge graveyard is in just 30 minutes. Getting to Mirdamad station from northern Tehran can take anywhere from ten minutes to an hour depending on traffic. Getting to Khomeini’s tomb from northern Tehran will take 45 minutes at 3 am and up to 2 hours on a day with normal traffic.

That’s just north south. East west is equally large. It’s like Los Angeles, Kansas City, or even Jacksonville: rambling on and on with about as much organization as a rash.

The smart thing to do would be to divide the city into precincts and elect city council members precinct by precinct. Instead, Tehran residents all over Tehran vote for the same pool of candidates. It’s all a bit overwhelming.

Candidates have to run a city-wide campaign to get elected. With limitations on television advertising, this means flyers, posters, sms messages, radio, and balloons. It’s expensive to run for Tehran’s city council. It takes a huge organization. Posters go up like wall paper. One candidate pasted right on top of another.

To make matters even more complicated, each candidate is assigned a code about two days before the election. Ballots are only valid when the candidate’s name and the candidate’s code are written correctly. The most successful campaigners produce cards with candidate’s names and their assigned codes printed on them. This, of course, favors conservatives who have strong organizations. Who else can safely meet and organize in Iran? Simply put, only the conservatives and the fundamentalists have been able to meet with impunity.

Voting for independents or reformers for city council meant scanning through hundreds of names at the polling station itself. Posters with names and codes covered every wall of most polling stations. You had to look carefully, find your candidates, write down their codes, and then vote. Most voters had scrap paper and pens that they carried with them from poster to poster.

It’s a wonder that so many people voted in the city’s elections and that so many ballots were cast correctly.

Elections in Tehran

The polls in Tehran were packed today as Tehranis went to the polls to vote for city council members (oh yeah, and the Council of Experts and a couple of Parliament seats).

This is the first time I’ve seen full polling stations. During the presidential elections, the polls we saw were empty (even though the Iranian news teams managed to find a couple of busy ones). The one near our house was packed from morning to night.

So, let me describe it to you: the polling stations are covered with posters listing all of the candidates along with an additional code for the city council candidates. There must have been a couple of hundred names printed on the walls.

To get a ballot, you wait in a long line. Hand in your id and give your fingerprint three times. After that, you get three empty ballots: one for city council, one for the Council of Experts, and one for the mid-term Parliament elections. The city council and c of e have about 15 (am I right?) blanks. If you don’t select 15 candidates, you cross out the remaining empty spots.

People crowd the posters, searching for their candidates and their codes. They scribble those onto a scrap of paper and then transcribe them onto the official ballots. There is no privacy. There are no booths or curtains. No one we see is even attempting to keep their ballot a secret.

Voting is not easy here. It is a real pain: a little bit like learning all of those horrible referenda in California.

Filled ballots go into the appropriate boxes. You get your id back and, if you are lucky, a piece of candy, and then you leave.

Many of our friends voted for the first time in ages during this election. “We have to vote,” a friend tells me. “We have to send a signal that we are still here… still fighting. I am dragging my husband to the polls. I told him that not voting only helps the conservatives. I think he agrees now.”

So… keep your fingers crossed: the results of Tehran’s city council elections will be interesting.

To vote, or not to vote

I have often wondered how boycotting elections benefits Iran. Behrooz Ghamari asks the same question in his article in Payvand:

The Donkey and the Date: On the Upcoming Municipal Council Elections in Iran:

"There is an expression in Farsi that describes people who want contradictory things: those who want both the donkey and the date. These are people who are never mistaken, and see all situations in the context of their own interests. Iranians and their Euro-American supporters, those who advocate boycotting every election in the Islamic Republic, cannot have it both ways. They cannot argue that the office of the president (and all other elected offices) is politically impotent, while also lamenting the repressive nature of the Ahmadinejad presidency and how he is taking the country back to its early postrevolutionary period. This poses a dilemma for these universal boycotters. If elected officers make a difference, for worse or better, in the Islamic Republic, then why shouldn't citizens vote? There are many different positions on this question ranging from single-minded abolitionists, whose agenda is regime change in Iran, with or without the help of their neocon brethren, to those who recognize the differences between different factions, but argue that participating in elections legitimizes authoritarian institutions such as the Guardian Council. Although the reasons for boycotting elections may differ, the result is the same: low voter participation has devastating consequences for reform candidates."

What do you guys think?

It can’t get any worse...

Oh yeah? I can think of thousands of ways that things can get worse. There is no rock bottom, I can guarantee that. There are only ledges on the way down. Get yourself on one of those ledges and hope that you can pull yourself up.

I have been accused of being biased against Iran by one of my recent readers. I think that if you read the entire site you will see it is 100% bar aks (opposite). I am in a funk now. When you get in a funk, everything goes wrong. Here’s a small list: crazy, vindictive landlords who want to get us arrested for giving notice; broken promises; missed deadlines; bad communication; out and out lying and purposeful misunderstandings; hospitals and death. Oh and politics. There is always that when you can’t find anything else to depress you.

“We are borderline clinically depressed,” K told me this morning. “I saw a program that described all of our symptoms.”

Us and just about everyone else in this country…

“Many of our friends are leaving the country,” a friend tells us. “They feel like the last eight years were a sham – that we are back at square one.”

“They have discovered 300 million dollars of corruption in the oil ministry,” K tells me.

“They’re scratching the surface.”


I remember before the war with Iraq when reporters and blogger" were saying that Iraq was not preparing for war at all. Iraq did not prepare for a war that most believed was inevitable. On the other hand, rumor has it that Iran is preparing for war: a war that most believe is, in fact, unlikely.

They are dragging out the negotiations: giving themselves time to build relationships with the Russians (oops! Soviets! Or uhhh Russians) and the Chinese and god knows what else. Some Iranians I speak to believe that the regime will eventually come to an agreement about the nuclear issues, but I am not so sure. Why would they come to an agreement with the EU and US when China doesn’t care about their nuclear ambitions or their human rights record?

“All of our clients are from China,” a lawyer tells me. “We don’t open the doors for Iranians even. They are never satisfied with our work; they call at all hours of the day and night; they don’t like to pay; and they are inefficient. Our Chinese customers love us. They have money. For them, we are cheap.” (The lawyer wasn’t commenting on foreign policy, nuclear power, or anything else but his business.)

On the other hand, there seems to be a shrinking sense that nuclear arms will make Iran more respectable. What could be causing this diminishment of enthusiasm? Could it be that most Iranians wanted to believe that the nuclear program was, indeed, peaceful? Could it be that they are now realizing that it is not entirely peaceful? Could it be that the regime may be thrilled with its new-found friendship with China, but that most Iranians look to the West when they see their future? Could it be that Tehran’s metro construction has struck water and caused the near collapse of a busy street?

Ch-ch-changes

It's countdown to a new president in Iran.

Last night Khatami gave an important speech that K found pretty exciting. "Everything he should have said 8 years ago, he is saying now." I hope to find a good translation soon. You can read Payvand's summary here: http://www.payvand.com/news/05/aug/1005.html.

Until then, here is K's summary:

Since the beginning of the revolution, there have been two Islams. One that embraces tolerance and diversity and guarantees freedom of worship for Zoroastrians, Jews, and Christians, and one that uses the tools of terror to impose its will. There is the Islam of Al Q'aeda and the Taliban and of those who support the use of methods of terror. And there is the Islam that says: we do not have all the answers. It says, we have to use scholarship to examine our faith and modernize our faith.

…

No manager in my government has ever been more than 5 meters from prison.

…

The Middle East can prosper when there is a true dialogue among the different faiths. The Middle East can prosper when Muslims, Christians, and Jews have a meaningful conversation with one another.

(1 ½ hours of explanation and then: standing ovation… )

I had a hard time following the speech. I'll just say that it was the most animated speech I have seen Khatami give and that it was interrupted several times by applause.

Juan Cole comments on Iran's elections

I wish Juan Cole would not waste his breath making comparisons between Bush and AN. It's exhausting... I'm exhausted from these arguments...

And I don't know how much he really knows about what goes on here and what AN will or will not do...

The fact of the matter is this: AN ran a compelling campaign in the one-week between the first and second rounds of the election. All of the other candidates pledged their votes to Hashemi which just made AN look more appealing to Iranians who do not trust the establishment.

Only time will tell what will happen here.

Informed Comment: All that said, it is probably true that there was some ballot stuffing by Ahmadinejad supporters. It was alleged by clerical moderate Karrubi, and it is plausible. These presidential elections are the least free and fair since the early 1990s, though all along there has been a problem of the exclusion and vetting of candidates by the clerics. On the other hand, it seems undeniable that Ahmadinejad's campaign struck a chord with many Iranians tired of corruption and economic stagnation. He may well have won the second round even without those 'extra' ballots.

Thanks to Diana for pointing me in this direction.

Today Iranians Woke Up to a New President…

Our friends are crying and depressed and sick. "Last night they started arresting boys and girls out walking together," a friend told me. "People are saying no more colorful scarves; no more parties…" This may seem to be the least important aspect of the whole election, but it's not. Live without a normal social life and see what happens to you…

Iranian tv is saying that Iranians have shamed America and Western news is saying that Iranians have taken a hard turn to the right. I am going to go out on a limb here and say that neither are correct.

This election was not about America.

This election was not about Islam.

The election may have been about the revolution.

This past week AN presented these simple messages:

Rich against poor and honesty against corruption.

People voted for AN. Raf voters voted against AN.

The middle class voted, but many of them voted for AN. The rich went on vacation.

The poor voted for AN. And there are a lot more poor people than rich people in Iran.

AN knew something about Iranians: they are sick to death of corruption, and they think every rich person is corrupt. They hate mullahs, but they still love Islam. And one more thing: the majority of his opponents are apathetic.

"I don't think it mattered who we voted for ever," a voting friend tells me. "This is the result they wanted from the beginning. They got it in the parliament and now they got it in our new president."

Her eyes are red from crying.

Cowboy campaigning in Iran

Hear in your head the theme song for the old television shoe Ponderosa.

Now imagine instead of a cowboy, the Islamic fundamentalist: Ahmadinejad. That is what I will do the next time I hear the song.

Last night I watched AN's campaign film. There was something so attractive about it. Here is this unassuming man who lives the way many Iranians live: simply and unpretentiously. He makes it clear that he has not been corrupted by money. He portrays himself as a friend of the poor. He is an idealist. "Our culture has come so far from the culture of the revolution."

He's right.

Now he may be elected as president of Iran. A very professional, efficient, modern friend of ours called and claimed that she will vote for him. She will call back to tell us her reasons. What could they possibly be? The undeniable sex appeal of facism? Romance with socialism? A utopian world view? A desire for change? A passion for Islamic rule? Who the f*** knows?

Meanwhile…

Hashemi is portraying himself as the future of Iran. A poster portrays him looking down, without the turban that identifies him as a cleric. The text reads something like: Against terror and for freedom.

What will it be?

Front-Runner in Iran Finds Students to Be a Tough Audience - New York Times

Front-Runner in Iran Finds Students to Be a Tough Audience - New York Times:

"'If Mr. Ahmadinejad comes to power, it will be a complete concentration of power like you have never had before in Iran,' said Amir Ali Nourbakhsh, a political and economic analyst in Tehran. He added, 'The question that will be answered for us will be, 'Will Iranians vote for radical Islamic socialism, yes or no?' '

But many of Mr. Ahmadinejad's supporters said they were not thinking that way, seeing him instead as a fresh face and a man of the people, while Mr. Rafsanjani is seen as a throwback, a part of a system they distrust.

'In my opinion, if Mr. Rafsanjani wins, they will have to replace his turban with a crown,' said Aida Shafiee, 20, a university student who was in the street on Tuesday protesting the failure of the Education Ministry to begin her program on time.

In fact, the street was crowded with protesters, young men and women, voicing their discontent. It looked like a natural constituency for the reform movement, but most everyone in the crowd said they supported Mr. Ahmadinejad.

'He has come from the people, and he is honest,' said Mehdi Gholamnia, 20, a student from the city of Bijar who said he voted four years ago for Mr. Khatami but this year will vote for Mr. Ahmadinejad. Iranians can vote when they are 15.

Mr. Rafsanjani's partisans were clearly taking the contest seriously and had stepped up their attacks on Mr. Ahmadinejad, with messages flashing on cellphones all over Tehran warning that he would usher in a Taliban-style government and put up dividers to separate men and women riding in elevators."

The rumor mill

Itchy's comments on a recent post made me decide it was time for a post on Iran's well-oiled rumor mill. Many Iranians, for instance, still believe that the earthquake in Bam was the result of underground nuclear testing.

Rumors get spread from family-to-family, friend-to-friend, and taxi driver to passenger. (Taxi drivers are the source of most of my favorite rumors…) Rumors are the way that Iranians deal with their distrust of official sources of information.

As Itchy pointed out in his comments, there is currently a rumor going around that the mayor of Tehran made it to the 2nd round in order to solidify the country's voters around Hashemi. So far, this rumor is being spread by Westerners. The Iranians we know are still too shocked to spread rumors.

Before last Friday's elections, there were rumors of plans for dirty tricks. The rumors were not specific, but there was certainly an expectation.

Recently, Fox News reported a popular Iranian rumor and called it a "well kept secret." This particular Fox News piece claimed that it is a well-kept secret that Iran is harboring Al Qaeda members including OBL. K and I have heard this rumor from ever other taxi driver since our first day in Iran. I would hardly call that a well-kept secret. I would call that a "rumor."

Election Results

Questions?...

Are bloggers and moderates so out of touch with Iran that they could predict a strong showing for Moin? Or did the heat convince borderline boycotters/voters to stay home?

[See poll (http://freethoughts.org/polls/archives/000704.php)]

There are about twenty people around me now: all of whom are in shock: voters and non-voters alike. The news in Iran is that Ahmadi Nejad may be the top vote getter and that Moin will be fifth. All of the voters we know (which turned out to be many more than two days before the vote), save 1, voted for Moin. Even the 1 Rafsanjani voter who early on admitted to her intention to vote, voted for Moin.

Demonstrations

Well there was a demonstration…
But it did not result in any deaths… I don't think.

Iran has a well-oiled rumor mill that I sometimes accidentally participate in.

We had 2 days of vote talk. At the last minute one of our friends began to canvass for Moin. He called everyone he knew and convinced them to go out and vote. "What are you waiting for?" He asked friends, family, and strangers. "Do you think America or Europe is going to come in and save us? Are you going out onto the streets? Do you think we should have a new revolution?" These are the questions he asked the non-voters. He was able to convince many to go out and vote. Many others remained unconvinced.

Boycotters argued that only a boycott would send the right message. I have always been dubious of this argument. I think it is difficult to weed active non-voters out from the apathetic.

And now we hear that Karoobi is leading. What?

TV coverage

Television programs are really pushing the vote. Iranian television is even broadcasting strange, fake LA satellite programs that urge people not to participate in the vote. I think these are meant as a form of comedy. A skinny guy with a tinny voice takes calls and makes himself look like a fool. I think that the government was so successful broadcasting snippets of the Zoroatrian guy who said that he would bring 50 full planes to Iran to bring about peaceful regime change that they thought that it would be a good idea to fake an LA-based call-in program calling on people not to participate in the vote.

I have a sense that there is a growing urge, if not intention, to vote. I found another person who is planning to vote. He plans to be the first Moin voter of the day. So in my informal poll, I have found 1 Moin voter and 1 Rafsanjani voter.

My taxi driver told me that fights have been breaking out all over town. "Yeah, supporters of the various candidates have taken to the streets and the police are busy breaking up their fights all over town." This has been confirmed by others.

K's nephew just stopped by to tell us that on his way here, the streets in front of one of the broadcasters was packed with police. "The driver said that there had been a demonstration against the government and that two people were killed."

Taxi Poll

The taxi poll

I've been in a lot of shared taxis lately: that means 5 passengers plus the drivers. Our conversations have been mostly mundane or non-existent. If you have a gregarious driver or gregarious passengers, shared taxis can be fun. If not, you have a quiet trip: you just sweat and, unless you are short and skinny, sit uncomfortably.

When K is with me, he always asks if anyone is voting. So far, only one person has said yes. One guy said, "Why should I vote? We already have a president. What difference would voting for a president make? It's just a title."

Last night, K and I were out waiting for a taxi to drive by to take us home. There were some young men working on their car: music blasting. A car pulled up. "Rafsanjani voters," K said pointing to the guys working on their car.

The driver who was young himself said, "Just wait. Three days after the election, they'll start cracking down and arresting people again."

Rock the Vote

Last night Rafsanjani had a Q&A with university students. One asked if he had ever been in love. "My thoughts are on the hereafter," he answered.

Another asked if it was okay to wear bright colors. "Of course," he answered.

Others complained that they were sick of being hassled every time they walked out on to the streets. Girls wanted to hang out with boys. Boys wanted to hang out with girls.

My Iranian friends and political activist friends tend to dismiss these concerns. "Iranians don't really want freedom. They just want to have sex," one friend stated just a couple of weeks ago. When we first came here, K commented: "Iranians think freedom means that they can walk hand-in-hand with their boyfriend or girlfriend."

Well isn't it? Aren't these personal freedoms important? Isn't fun important? Isn't political freedom part of this equation?

UPDATE (2013): a bit of the discussion with Rafsanjani was published on YouTube. For those of you who speak Persian, here it is:

Basically the young woman, a 23-year old student, is explaining why she doesn't want to vote. She's tired of the harassment. She's sick of all the bs. She's sick of the mistrust. "I don't have any expectations from you. Just give me back trust."

How sad is that?

FT.com / Middle East & Africa - Islamic virtue takes a back seat on Iran's new-look campaign trail:

"'If a candidate tries to escape from democracy and shows toughness, it won't work,' said Hamid-Reza Jalaei-Pour, a sociology professor at Tehran university.

For the first time in Iran, there is a candidate clearly running for a party. Mostafa Moein, a reformist contender, was chosen by Mosharekat, the main reformist group. In a reality check to polished electioneering, Dr Moein appeared on Wednesday on state television in an interview with Saeed Hajjarian, the leading reformist journalist partially paralysed by an assassination attempt by Islamic vigilantes in 2000.

'You are an example to our young,' Dr Moein told Mr Hajjarian, whose questions were run as subtitles because of his slurred speech.

But just a week before the election, candidates are struggling to motivate a disillusioned electorate. Iranians are sceptical about politics and politicians' promises after wearying years of revolution, high unemployment and inflation, and Mr Khatami's battles with unelected state institutions. 'Not even all the changes in the way of campaigning may be enough to make people vote,' says Mr Jalaei-Pour. 'We have had 25 years of sloganeering, so now it's very difficult to fool Iranians.'"

[emphasis mine]

The Big Game
K's nephew predicts that tonight the Iranian national soccer team will beat the Bahrain team Doh-heech (2-0). A tie would make them one of the first teams to qualify for the World Cup. ( Read the story )

But more importantly, this big game is happening just 9 days short of the election. 12,000 police will be on the street. Their mandate is to use as little force as possible because the government does not want a forceful confrontation with crowds of young Iranians at this time.

Rafsanjani is ready to claim the team's victory for himself. His campaign plans to keep a high profile tonight. Rumor has it that there are already Rafsanjani soccer victory campaign posters ready.

Despite all the shiny, happy campaign images around, I have not met a single person who plans to vote. Friends tell us that even the fashionable youth sporting Rafsanjani headbands do not plan to vote. It's just fashion and money and little bit of guerilla marketing.

Yesterday I saw a group of teen-aged girls tearing down campaign posters on fashionable Valiasr Street. It was 3:00 in the afternoon. The girls were not making any effort to be secretive about their actions.

Posters come up, posters go down.

That said, Iranian agencies are already planning their world cup tours. Iranians have the greatest confidence in their team. Go Iran!

Hashemi
I don't get the whole Rafsanjani fashion craze and, neither, it seems, do other bloggers. ( Farideh Nicknazar on Open Democracy's Iran Blog writes, "What I find interesting, and I have never seen this done before, is to see young trendy women (with makeup and minimum head cover) showing off headbands with "Hashemi" written on them in English... Why in English?")

Last night a friend of our's got a call from a friend: "I'm performing tonight, why don't you come see me?" he asked.

She agreed, called a couple of friends, and made her way to Rafsanjani's headquarters. "It was so strange," she told us. "The place was filled with chic young women wearing tiny little headscarves." (That description fits her as well.) "I could not believe it. I stuck my hair in my scarf because I thought that maybe I will have problems later. He's having these concerts every night."

"It's kind of the Rafsanjani disco," K joked.

Our friend laughed. "It was weird. The place was filled with chic, young women and mullahs."

Blogging about the Election

Yahoo has a round up of Iranian bloggers blogging about the election. They know a lot more about Iranian politics than I do.

Bloggers of Iran - Yahoo! News: "Blogging has gone international in a big way.

And in
Iran, blogging means that news, ideas and rumors are bypassing traditional censors. As one of Iran's leading bloggers recently pointed out at opendemocracy.net, Iran's blogs are generating 'an unprecedented amount of information [and] pre-election news has...been much more transparent.' In fact, Hossein Derakhshan argued, ' it will probably be one of the most open and transparent elections Iran has ever seen.'"