This Strange Creature Called MAN...

Shaheen Fatemi, Iran va Jahan:

President who? Where did this anachronistic misfit come from? These are the questions that are being asked by everyone after the results of the so-called elections in Iran were made public. They claim Rafsanjani received 10 million votes while MAN (Mahmood Ahmadi Nejad) received 17 million. I for one, take these figures with more than a grain of salt! The regime did not admit neutral international observers thus preserving a freehand in cooking the books according to the wishes of the Great Leader. Obviously he could not afford another punch in the nose from the voters similar to the one he received eight years ago when people voted for Khatami and against the ‘official’ candidate. For this round, let us wait for more accurate information before determining what percentage of these votes has been genuine.

In the meantime we can proceed with an attempt at seeking answers to a few other questions. What about the much talked about boycott? Was the boycott movement a success or a failure? By all indication, even using the regime’s own numbers, it seems obvious that the call to boycott has been spectacularly successful in the big cities were people have been freer from the pervasive guise of the fascist regime in comparison to smaller cities and rural communities. Some early pro-government reporters have claimed that in Tehran around 28% of the eligible voters participated in the second round of the elections. Allowing for considerable ‘irregularities’ that everyone is talking about and adjusting for it, we could come up with a number in the low twenties which would match what had been reported for Tehran in other most recent elections. Such a low turn-out, if verified, means more that 70% of the eligible voters in the country’s capital with more that 10 million population have stayed home. Obviously, the propaganda machine of the regime will try to over-shadow such facts. READ MORE

A bigger question begs an answer. No matter how exaggerated one wants to consider the regime’s statistics, the fact remains that millions of people have gone to polls and have voted for the most reactionary zealot among the ‘chosen eight’ who had survived the sieve of the inquisition-style ‘Guardians.’ This is the candidate who claims the 1979 Revolution was not aimed at democracy. He has advocated nationalizing all productive units and redistributing the private wealth among the poor and the ‘disinherited.’ In other words, he is using the same demagogic and populist language which was used by Khomeini more that 27 years ago. It seems very hard to find a better fit for the term reactionary. What circumstances make it possible for millions of people in today’s world, in a country which prides itself with a long and glorious history to vote for such a zombie?

To put it bluntly, MAN is a true and authentic offspring of this regime and the consequences which have led the desperate masses to vote for him are the results of the regime’s failures. In the entire social history of the Iranian nation the gulf separating the rich from the poor has never been so wide. The Iranian middle-class has been decimated by the Islamic Republic. The so-called Gini Coefficient, a measure used by the economists for scaling income inequality among the population, has never been this high for Iran. The rich are supper rich while the majority of the population has a hard time making the ends meet.

Every social ill that this demagogue has been clinking to in order to catch peoples’ sympathy and their votes, has been the direct result of this regime’s mismanagement. He speaks of fighting corruption. With the exception of the clergy, the Pasdaran and the Basijs military units have been the major source and substantial cause of corrupt practices in the post-revolutionary Iran. MAN, himself, is a product of these two coercive institutions. But the fact remains that it is the colossal failures of the regime that has produced millions of under-class citizens ready to vote for a populist demagogue who is attracting them with lies, half-truths and false promises. Khamenei seems to have taken a short course from another populist demagogue, the Venezuelan Dictator Hugo Chavez.