I Will Not Vote

Jafar Rezaei, FreeThoughts.org: an Iranian blogger explains why he will not vote.

Those who promote participation in the coming election have only one argument to present. According to them a boycott of the elections would throw the reformist camp out of the last bastion of power left and would permit the hardliners to take over the entire power structure and form a uniform and monolithic front. This would mean the defeat of the gradual progress to democracy in Iran. So despite all the disadvantages of the reformist camp and their candidate Moeen, the pragmatic and reasonable decision to make is to vote them in power again and stop the hardliners' total victory.

In this article I try to show why I believe this is not true and why voting in this election would be a mistake for anyone who wishes to see Iran move towards freedom and democracy. READ MORE

If we accept the scenario of the pro-election factions, we must ask the question why the hardliners even risk having a reformist in the competition in the first place. If he is going to be an obstacle to their plans of power, why not get rid of him altogether since they have huge amount of powers within and outside the law? What happened however was the opposite. The Guardian Council first barred the reformist candidate from running for presidency. (Contrary to many later claims, this move was in accordance with the constitution, which at one place demands that the elections be supervised by the Guardian Council, and in another place acknowledges this very Council as the sole authority to interpret the constitution.) He was then allowed to continue to run with a direct decree from the Supreme Leader personally. Since the hardliners have evidently both power and the "law" on their side to accept or bar any candidates they please, why did they go to all this trouble to keep their foe in the race?

One possible answer could be that the Leader himself is not a hardliner, but a reformist at heart. This is actually what the future vice president of this reformist candidate seems to believe. But then if the Leader is a reformist and he has all the power of the country, even power to act outside the constitution, granted to him ironically by the constitution itself, why do we need to vote for the reformists in the first place to keep the reform going. After all, the Leader has managed to stay in power for the last 15 years, so he has definitely real resources beside the "law".

The other possibility is that the Leader is trying to divide the number of votes of another rival this way, for example that of Rafsanjani and his camp. If so, then we are already faced with a division within the hardliner camp that is so deep that one faction is using the supposed reformist thorn in the eye, to fight the other faction. This is already in contradiction with the monolithic and uniform hardliners front we are being warned against.

Again a possible answer could be that they have fractions and rivalries within themselves, but are unified against the people. That begs two remarks. First of all, we still wouldn't be faced with a monolithic front. After all, the rivalries could be used to weaken the whole structure especially when they don't have this shared reformist foe to unite them anymore. The events since the last two elections support this assertion, a point to which I will return. The second remark is that in such a case one faction evidently has such deep enmity with the other that they are willing to use the reformists in their battle. So, why shouldn't that be the case in the future as well?

There have been two elections that where boycotted in practice by the people: the municipal elections and the last parliamentary elections. In both of them the hardliners won almost all the seats. Back then the same arguments were used to invoke the people to vote, the same grim scenario of a hardliner-dominated regime who would stifle all the progress made were told and retold again and again. It is now two years past and the society still enjoys a more lax environment. Actually the tone and content of the speeches and demands of the hardliners have become much more in line with the new atmosphere. They wear chic dresses, talk about reform in religious views to accommodate modern life, relations with the US and so on. At the same time, the reformists themselves admit that Khatami didn't use his supposed power, especially in the past two years. They say this to contrast it with their own candidate that now promises to be different. So here is another question. The reformists were not elected because people didn't bother to vote, and those in power chose not to use the power they had for the causes of the reform, and yet the situation seems better now than two years ago. How is this possible if the only shield protecting the people against a fate worse than death is to have the reformists, no matter how incompetent, sit in power positions? On the other hand, we can see very clearly the fractions within the hardliner camp, again in contrast to what the pro-participation group is saying.

Therefore I think the reality is very different from this scenario. What accounts for the lax environment and the soft talk of the hardliners now is their fear of the American presence at their borders and the disillusionment of the people. (They know very well that they need some way to keep the huge youth population in control, especially with the ever increasing rate of unemployment. The system knows that it can't go on as a monolithic power structure indefinitely.) As long as these two elements exist, not voting will not change the present condition for the worse. Another factor is the regime's attempt to gain nuclear power. They will try to keep the present situation intact as long as they haven't achieved that goal. An important aspect of this balance is the image of the reformists in power positions, who at the same time declare themselves loyal to the present constitution, the Leader and the ambition towards nuclear energy. This way the regime will maintain the subtle legitimacy it has won since the election of 1997.

This brings us to the third point. Those supporting the elections consider the issue of legitimacy as irrelevant, since according to them everyone inside and outside Iran already knows this system as illegitimate and yet during the past 26 years this has led to nowhere. First of all this is not true. All the gradual moderation of the regime, from the ceasefire with Iraq to the present concessions were all partly reactions to outside pressure such as US sanctions and their almost total isolation in the world. This is a matter of legitimacy. Before the 1997 elections Iran was in total isolation. The European countries had called their ambassadors, Iran was under a US embargo and even Saudi Arabia, Egypt and most of the Islamic world shunned the Islamic Republic. After the election with the large turnout, Iran made close ties with the Arab countries, build bridges with the Europeans and the US embargo was not followed outside the US. Even the US tried all it could to open relations. All of this happened under the excuse of a reform movement and an elected side of the regime fighting an unelected minority.

If this is not buying legitimacy, I don't know what is. Ever since that election things are different. The regime itself based its legitimacy in the world arena on the popular support for its tamed constitutional reformism. As a result, given the 1997 turnout and later elections, the boycott now would definitely be a blow to the subtle legitimacy the regime has bought for itself. In the precarious situation after 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the pro-democracy movements in other countries of the region, this could be a very heavy blow.

Even the pro-reformists admit that all the power and advances of the so-called reform movement is due to people's demands and the desire for change. Well, the people are still here and so are their demands and desires. This can be focused again and turned into political action towards a referendum once the whole chapter of reform within the system is closed. It can't go on as long as a sham reformist mirage is hanging there to divert attention.

Another question worth asking is what Moeen voters would have done if Moeen had remained disqualified? According to the logic of bad and worst they should still have voted for the least bad among the remainig candidates. But many of them would have abstained in that case. As Tajzadeh declared after Moeen's disqualification, they would have considered the elections as void. Now this is interesting. Obviously they believe there is more in the Moeen's camp than not being the worst. But is that so?

It is important to note the background and the present attitude of the reformist candidates in this light. They have proven time and again that they will not stand firm to win any substantial freedom or democracy. Even now after being qualified like this, they still fail to demand any of the necessary conditions for even the slightest real reform, from the unconditional release of political prisoners to the formation of a truly overarching front against tyranny. It is also interesting to remember that all this new, slightly more radical and different stand points are taken only after they were banned and reaccepted, with the goal of winning votes. If none of this had happened, they would not have stood for even this much. How can they be trusted to remember even the insignificant new promises they are making right now, once they have won the votes they are craving for?

This is not surprising. How can they be any different, since they insist on working within the current constitution. Here is a good article to show what this constitution really amounts to, both logically and in practice. It can very well be argued that by giving false promises, bringing real courageous forces in front and then leaving them alone and vulnerable they frustrate the forces of change and do more harm to the whole movement than any possible good.

Putting the pieces together now explains why the Leader asks for the reformists to be accepted, why the regime tries so hard to present a milder face in the days before the elections and is so desperate for gaining votes for no matter which candidate. It is unfortunate that no specific plans exist at the moment for after the boycott, but that does not change the main conclusion. It is worth reminding that this lack of organization is partly due to the continuous effort of those who try to revive a dead corpse and to take us down a dead-end alley once more. After the election there would still be many opportunities to build upon the general consensus towards a referendum.

This is why I believe the only logical and pragmatic choice right now is the absolute boycott of the elections.

Jafar Rezaei was born in Mashhad, an important religious city northeast of Iran. He moved to Tehran, where he went to university and studied Chemical Engineering. This is his first attempt at an orderly written presentation of his thoughts on a political matter.