Saturday, July 04, 2009

Du calme, messieurs. Du calme.

Yes, it is entirely possible that the majority of the Iranian public does support Ahmadinejad; although more than half the people polled did not give a response, and there probably were irregularities which boosted his final taking of the ballots. Amir Taheri probably explained the situation best: "there is no independent monitoring at all in Iran", so it is simply not possible to argue based on concrete evidence to what extent voting irregularities were present. The speed with which Ahmadinejad's victory was announced---there were more than 40 million ballots to count, by hand, and they announced the victory within 2 hours of polls closing---; the fact that Ahmadinejad won across all age, ethnic, and other divisions; and other statistics such as higher-than-100% turnout in some places---although this could be partly explained by people registering to vote in one place but voting in another, which is legal in Iran---do, though, constitute sufficient reason to suspect there was vote rigging, or that some votes were simply disregarded; or, at the very least, to discredit the 63% figure even if Ahmadinejad had indeed won the popular ballot.
So while it may be quite incorrect to say that Ahmadinejad's re-election does not represent the will of the Iranian people, it could be said that his re-election is opposed by a significant minority, and that the way the election has been conducted, as well as the way the concerns of this minority have been addressed, has been downright disgraceful.
Until there is further evidence, I do not think it plausible that Western countries played a substantial role in the protests that followed; the charges that Western media reports were fanning the flames and that Western intelligence and political establishments were providing covert funding and other support probably had some truth to it, but the support was probably never very major, and the Western media was only following its usual instincts by focusing on potential irregularities and controversy.
A columnist, a former US Assistant Secretary of the Treasury no less, provides an alternative view: "As a person who has seen it all from inside the U.S. government, I believe that the purpose of the U.S. government’s manipulation of the American and puppet government media is to discredit the Iranian government by portraying the Iranian government as an oppressor of the Iranian people and a frustrater of the Iranian people’s will. This is how the U.S. government is setting up Iran for military attack." Perhaps, but, with the economy still in the doldrums, the military stretched wide across two theatres and North Korea throwing nuclear tantrums again, any military attack on Iran cannot be a priority for the US government at the moment. Besides, the Middle East penchant for conspiracy theories is infamous.
More importantly, there seem to have been substantial local roots: genuine unhappiness among sectors of the population, and perhaps power-play among the ruling elite. So while it is quite false and irresponsible to describe the election as a "coup d'état", Mousavi's remark that Iran's recently-elected government is "not legitimate" may not be too far wide of the mark. Its recent violent crackdown would only harden that perception. But it need not precipitate breakdown or revolution; the power-play between the reformist movement and the conversative establishment might become quite bloody without exceeding the existing framework of the Islamic Republic.
In the long run, to take a objective, perhaps clinical, view, the recent violence may not be too different from a major market correction. It will be painful, but Iran's political system will come out the better, and possibly a shade more reformist and more humane, for it.

Neda's death was tragic, but harping on it risks losing focus on the bigger picture in Iran; and even as we share in the world's grief, let us not forget that far worse shit happens every day, sometimes just next door, only we never notice because it generally goes unreported.

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