Iranian elections
http://counterpunch.org/ghamari12092006.html
December 9 / 10, 2006
Iran’s Upcoming Municipal Elections The Donkey and the Date
By BEHROOZ GHAMARI
On December 15 Iranians will cast their ballots for municipal
elections. Reformist candidates across the country, particularly in
Tehran, have a credible opportunity to win, if their constituents
emerge from their hibernation and actively participate in these
elections. The government has hindered the domestic media’s attempt
to generate a celebratory environment for the electorates to exercise
their constitutional right. Iranian media around the world need to
realize that a dampened down election will only perpetuate the status
quo and will reinforce a growing messianic belief that Iranians need
to be rescued.
The famous American sociologist Harold Garfinkel observed that people
become conscious of the order of things around them only when that
order is disrupted. The taken-for-granted thus exists invisibly until
its existence is breached.
Since his election in 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,’s administration has
ceaselessly restricted civil liberties and political rights. Numerous
opposition parties and personalities rightfully publicize these
violations, and emphasize the importance of legal and political
protection of civil liberties as the foundation for any future
transformation of the Iranian society. But many of these same groups
have been relentlessly denying the existence of these liberties in
the Islamic Republic in the first place. If the Ahmadinejad
administration has banned the publication and the reprint of numerous
books, if they have reinstituted secret prisons, if they refuse
permits for demonstrations, if they close newspapers indefinitely
without a court order, if government officials have refused to be
accountable for their actions to the Majlis, if all of these changes
are indeed happening don’t they suggest that there had been a
different political configuration in place before they were effected?
Could it be that the Khatami presidency accomplished things that are
now being disrupted? We become more aware of the achievements of
Khatami when we witness their disappearance.
In his first interview after leaving office, in response to a
reporter who asked about his best moment as president, Khatami
referred to his address at Tehran University on the occasion of
Student Day in 2004. During his speech, enraged students interrupted
and denounced him for yielding to the conservative judiciary in
pursing his project of strengthening the institutions of civil
society. He listened quietly with open displeasure and left after
hearing out his opponents. He told the reporters, that was his finest
moment in office! For the first time in the country’s history a
leader faced shouting critics in an open forum and not a single
person was arrested afterwards. Before Khatami, this would have been
unimaginable in Iran, and is perhaps no longer possible even in the
United States today.
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.
The boycotters, the civilized ones, believe that the only path to
change in Iran is through a general referendum on the constitution of
the Islamic Republic. When asked how this might be possible, regime-
change advocates outline a program of civil disobedience which, if
massive, would coerce the ruling coterie to relinquish its power and
accept the terms and results of the referendum. Unfortunately, tark-e
`adat mujeb-e maraz-ast, old habits die hard. One of the principal
shortcomings in Iranian political culture is the lack of enduring,
persistent, and patient mobilization from below. The old political
left (Islamic or secular) subscribed to a Jacobin form of politics,
passionately believing that social change could only be realized top-
down by decapitating the state’s head. While many boycotters don’t
endorse violence, they still hold out hope for the single blow, the
referendum, that would terminate the Islamic regime. Piecemeal
transformation does not exist in the political lexicon of the Iranian
left (or right). Politics Iranian style borrows heavily from Bazaari
culture: Herculean in the wholesale, horrendous in the retail.
As for me, I oppose any party that hopes to claim victory in a not-so-
likely-referendum in a not-so-possible-future. I know this because
contrary to those who believe that the chief problem in Iranian
politics is that the wrong people are in power (that might as well be
true), the real problem is structural: power corrupts its wielders.
There is only one way that this predicament can change: expanding the
formal and informal institutions in which citizens participate
actively and regularly. Politics does not begin and end with voting.
Nor is civic participation monumental or spectacular. Citizens
practice their economic, political, and social responsibilities in
countless ways: in their workplaces, professional associations,
neighborhoods, and schools. Along with the criticism one might make
of President Khatami’s weakness, naivete, or passivity, those
citizens of the Islamic Republic who themselves failed to
institutionalize political reforms in myriad municipal and
professional organizations should also be held culpable for failing
to strengthen civil society.
Iranians have another chance on December 15 to practice their rights
and responsibilities in municipal and city council elections around
the country. In order to defeat reformist candidates who have somehow
survived the disqualification procedures and still appear on the
ballot, the Judiciary, the ministries of Culture and Islamic
Guidance, Information, and Domestic Affairs, the state-controlled
radio and television, and the conservative newspapers have all been
mobilized to ensure low participation of the electorate. The
judiciary spokesperson has threatened the newspapers that run front-
page news of the election with closure and censure.
Iranian expatriates with access to mass media should counter this
strategy by turning the municipal elections into a welcome political
event. It is imperative for Iranians at home and abroad to
participate in these elections. The more engaged people remain with
these processes, the harder it becomes for any institution in society
to trample on their wishes. An empowered reformist city council in
Tehran, or any other municipality in the country, could achieve
modest, but genuine changes in the way the city is managed and the
way its residents live. While most Iranian expatriates remain
impervious towards modest changes in daily life, we should realize
that what seems negligible to us often has remarkable consequences
for our fellow citizens inside the country. Incremental changes are
only irrelevant to those whose lives are untouched by those changes.
Behrooz Ghamari is a professor of history and sociology at the
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of the
forthcoming book, Islam and Dissent in Postrevolutionary Iran. He can
be reached at bghamari@uiuc.edu