Iran: a disputed election
Last December, I made some predictions for 2009. Number 9 was: "Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will win the presidential election in Iran, but only after seeing off a serious challenge and amid allegations of widespread vote-fixing."
And so, it seems, it came to pass. I'm not in Tehran, so I can't judge how seriously to take the allegations from his apparently defeated rival, Mir Hussein Mousavi, that he is the victim of electoral fraud. But I do remember when I was there for parliamentary elections nine years ago (when the reformists won 65 per cent of the vote) that certainly in Tehran - and certainly among the young - there was a passionate desire for change. Then, as now, the demand was simple: We want freedom.
It's far more difficult to judge sentiment outside the big cities, where people are poorer and much less likely to talk openly to foreign reporters. But if you want an idea of what Iran's many bloggers and Twitterers are saying, you'll find a selection, plus video clips, here.
And the BBC's world affairs editor, John Simpson, who is in Iran, adds his thoughts here.
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Robin,
I also felt that the Iranian election results would be rigged. It is the suggested scale of the fraud which amazes me.
What I also find amazing is the lack of comment from the left leaning posters who usually fill up the BBC blogs to complain about police brutality, where are these bloggers?, do innocent Iranians demonstrating against their government not count?, does police brutality only count if it is a Western or right wing country who have committed the offence?, where is the outrage from these left wing bloggers?.
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The intent of Iran and North Korea seems clear just as it always has to people who view the world for what it is rather than what they wish it was. Many speculate that they are collaborating in weapons technology. How long is the US going to wait before it acts? Will Israel act against Iran first? By this point, the possibility of weapons technology having been spread throughout both countries is real so that a strike on a single facility or small number of facilities would not be sufficient to eliminate the threat. We can only hope that they haven't been exported to points beyond their national borders. Europe as usual is paralyzed and impotent. Will the US be paralyzed too? If either country were to attack the US either directly or through terrorist surrogates with a nuclear weapon, in the aftermath of the reaction the world will never be the same. It appears the US has fogotten the lessons of World War II while it's a given that Europe never learned them in the first place.
It was a delusion for those who lived in Iran or outside to believe that somehow the people of Iran have any more control over their own destiny than the people of North Korea do. False hope based on emotion is a very dangerous self indulgence.
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That people want freedom is the motivation for all corrupt leaders and governments to all they can to prevent that happening!
Did anyone think that the voting would not be rigged?
But, before we get carried away about other countries, we would do well to look at ourselves. There are areas of our own lives where freedom of thought is very much a threat to the establishment...
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