Catching up, three

Not quite a month ago, on May 22, I noted that, just like last year, the Guardian Council in Iran had blocked the candidacy of most reformers running for national office. Last year it was parliament, this year it is the presidency.

Well, the election took place on Friday and in one way it came out exactly as expected and in another, the results were a surprise.

As predicted, none of the seven candidates got the required majority for a victory. A run-off is scheduled for June 24. In addition, the top vote-getter proved to be, as expected, former president Hashemi Rafsanjani. He was followed by hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (who will go up against Rafsanjani in the run-off), and reformist cleric Mehdi Karroubi.

The surprise lay in that while a hard-liner and a reformer were expected to finish second and third, Ahmadinejad and Karroubi were not them. The candidates expected to finish second and third, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf and Mostafa Moin, instead finished fourth and fifth.

Ahmadinejad's "stunning political rise," as AP accurately described it, may have drawn some benefit from the fact that on Monday, just days before the election,

Iran was struck by a wave of deadly bomb attacks in the restive southwestern city of Ahfaz and in the capital Tehran, with the Islamic regime accusing Iraq-based terrorists of seeking to destabilize the country ahead of presidential elections. At least eight people were killed and 75 wounded by a series of four blasts outside several public buildings in Ahvaz....

Another blast hit a busy square in Tehran, killing one person and seriously wounding four, official media said.

A natural tendency to unite around official leaders in response to an attack, which officials blamed on - surprise! - foreign terrorists, could have produced a real boost for Ahmadinejad, who is the mayor of Tehran. (I still remember with some astonishment how Rudy Giuliani became a "great leader" - and Time's "Man of the Year" - in the wake of 9/11, pretty much solely by virtue of failing to panic.) This is of course speculation and without knowing how the vote broke down regionally I can't be confident, but it would help to explain his sudden emergence from the pack.

Another thing hard to measure is the meaning of the turnout, which was described as better than expected but still below that of previous presidential elections. A fair amount of thinking maintains that White House criticism of the vote as "illegitimate" on election eve actually increased turnout among people who regarded the statements as insults and interference. But the turnout, about 62.7%, makes that hard to judge; for the same reason, it's hard to estimate the impact of

anti-regime activists who are disillusioned about the prospect of change in a system run by clerics[, who] urged "none of the above." Boycott appeals had been carried on Web sites, pamphlets and satellite TV programs from the large Iranian community around Los Angeles - given the local nickname "Tehrangeles."

"We want to show the world empty streets," said Homa Sarshar, a journalist who works for one of the Los Angeles-based stations backing a boycott.

That may have resulted in an own goal, as Moin, the leading light of the reformists in the election, would likely have drawn his strongest support from among the very people most likely to have responded to such a call. But again, without detailed results, that is more speculation. What is clear, though, is that it's not only the Shrub team that questions the validity of an process where a group of reactionary clerics decides who gets to run for office in a government whose every action must be approved by those same clerics.

In France, several thousand people protested Iran's presidential election Saturday at a suburban Paris rally led by an exiled Iranian opposition group that denounced the vote as a sham. The demonstrators chanted: "Mullahs, No!"

And while the election is unlikely to upset that system, attempts at reform in Iran will likely continue. Before the election,

in Tehran, police broke up a gathering by women protesting over the Islamic Republic's gender discrimination, making at least two arrests as the demonstration threatened to spiral into a larger anti-regime protest.

The rally began with about 30 women assembled outside Tehran University, but they were quickly joined by about 200 passers-by. The crowd began shouting slogans including "Freedom for Iran" and "No to totalitarianism."

In the wake of the election, Elaheh Koolaee, a top aide for Moin, said "our failure ... doesn't mean reforms have come to an end or Iran doesn't need change." And as AP noted,

the real worry for the establishment is the vast pool of young Iranians. More than half of Iran's 70 million people are under 25 years old. The expectations for greater openness and opportunities - begun by [departing President Mohammad] Khatami - are only expected to grow.

"They cannot make us go backward," said 19-year-old Mohammad Reza Baradaran. "We've tasted a bit of freedom now."

On a more immediate note, Karroubi

accused Islamic vigilantes and soldiers of "intimidating" voters to back Ahmadinejad - who slipped past Karroubi 19.48 percent to 19.3 percent. Karroubi's aides demanded an official probe and warned they could unleash street demonstrations.

Karroubi's campaign chief, Ali Akbar Montashamipour, said any signs of military interference in politics would make "people rise up against the establishment."

That's an establishment that seems to have the upper hand now and even be regaining some previously-lost ground as addressing economic difficulties take precedence in many people's minds over greater political and cultural freedom. But all such regimes face a Catch-22: If they fail to improve economic conditions, they risk increasing resistance from a dissatisfied populace. But if they do, they equally risk increasing demands for other sorts of freedoms. Gandhi is supposed to have mused amazedly on the fact that every totalitarian system - without exception - has eventually fallen.

I'm reminded of People's Park in Berkeley. It has a long and tangled history, but the Reader's Digest version is that the University of California at Berkeley purchased and demolished the houses on a roughly 2-acre plot in the city with the declared intention of building student housing. It never did and in 1969, a diverse group of Berkeley residents took over the space, cleared it of debris, and created a community park.

Three weeks later, the University, with the help of 100 California state cops, bulldozed the park and fenced it in. Riots and demonstrations followed in which one person was killed, another blinded, and a good number more injured. At the end of it, People's Park was a muddy, vacant lot surrounded by a chain-link fence bedecked with flowers, peace symbols, and declarations of resistance.

That's the end of that chapter, but not the end of the story. The park has had its ups and downs over the years since, as the University has come up with various plans for its use for everything from a parking lot to volleyball courts. None of them overcame community resistance and People's Park is now - a park owned and managed by the University. It's not the community park originally envisioned and created, but it's a public park. In April, it was the site of a 36th anniversary festival.

The point of all this is that in the midst of the initial demonstrations, as the park sat sad and destroyed behind the University's barricade, a provost - I wish I could remember his name, but I can't - said "In the long run of history, flowers are always going to win against fences and students are always going to win against old men."

Keep hope alive.

Footnote: Last year's posts about the elections and the protests of reformers came on these dates:
January 17, 2004
January 22, 2004
January 29, 2004
February 3, 2004
February 6, 2004
February 8, 2004
February 14, 2004
February 19, 2004
February 23, 2004
March 9, 2004