There were people who had not voted in thirty years as a sign of protest to what is termed as hi-jacked fruit of the 1979 revolution later named the Islamic Revolution. Many millions had sulked away from the regime but this time they came to the arena to claim their honour back.
I voted after twelve years, I even took my son who was a first-timer and called my family and relatives in Iran asking them to turnout and say “no” to Mr Ahmadinejad and his allies, namely the sub-military pressure group of “Bassidge,” the Guardian Council and the Supreme Leader.
The last time I had voted was in May 1998—then as a student in Teheran—for the more moderate Mr Khatami whose intention was to show our civilised face to the world which really mattered for us, though he was also a part of the regime whose founder Ayatollah Khomeini had claimed in 1979 to have brought a better life—secular as well as spiritual—to the nation without ever intending to take political power either in his hands or present it to the clergy. That was 1979. Almost 20 years later and we wanted a change of the established theocracy into democracy. A lost cry, apparently, as the regime could not tolerate our electing Mr Khatami with a ground-breaking poll, though the Supreme Leader interpreted it as a big referendum recognising the legitimacy of the Islamic System—what has become a norm after elections whether there be a turnout or not. Whatever.
Mr Khatami’s election was, however, battered down by crushing the students’ protest of July 1999 by the imposition of the Supreme Leader’s will above the constitutional law implementing a parliament bill on reforming the press statute. The incident marked the beginning of the end of reform within the political framework of the country to which Mr Khatami’s waning solid reaction was an internecine party. Many of those days’ activists ended up either in solitary cells and prisons or if not totally liquidated were forced to leave the country and live in exile.
Imagine our big surprise when four years ago Mr Ahmadinejad was declared president in a much disputed election which was hailed by Mr Karoubi—then also a candidate—as a big fraud, the majority of the nation never realising that they would be so disgraced and internationally shamed by the president’s unconventional behaviour and irresponsible speeches. From the morning he was ordained President of the Islamic Republic of Iran by the Supreme Leader, he began speaking on behalf of all Iranians many millions of whom were against him but had no means to show their objection except for scattered civil resistance and disobedience which have always been ruthlessly demolished.
Iran is a country where every impossibility can wear the mantle of possibility and plausibility if you have the blessing of the Leader, who stands above the constitution, with you. Mr Ahmadinejad has spent the pile of oil money sometimes without documenting the expenditure, and has since last year eliminated many of the monitoring administrations, supervising councils and institutions. Instead he has overtly and expansively donated millions of dollars to Hezbollah in Lebanon much to public disappointment and the Supreme Leader has smiled away any objections by pointing an accusing finger to “allegations of those connected to the enemy.”
This time, however, we as the silent majority wanted to save our honour, regain our demolished pride, and reclaim our legitimate basic civil rights back. Mr Ahmadinejad’s irresponsible speeches and behaviour at political arenas such as Columbia University and Geneva defending the Palestinian cause at the expense of Iranian honour and economy—his anti-semitic position and nuclear ideals as well as anti-American standpoint have brought sanctions to the Iranian people—gave rise to a turnout of Iranians conducting a non-violent discourse through the ballot-box within the framework of Iran’s constitution with the Supreme Leader. A myriad of voters stormed the polling stations and were determined not to allow Mr Ahmadinejad to take Iran to a pending critical situation whose end would be a catastrophic international vortex.
The result? Well, an ignominious rigging of the votes. Mr Ahmadinejad’s third minister of interior, who had officially allowed a ten-million-dollar donation to his president’s campaign, as the managing authority of the election brought Mr Ahmadinejad out of his Pandora box, little-knowing that people’s unabated frustration would be unforgiving and unsparing. (Mr Ahmadinejad’s first minister of interior resigned objecting to his dominating decisions and the second minister of interior Mr Kordan was impeached for his forged PhD degree which he had claimed was from Oxford University in LONDON!!!)
Mr Ahmadinejad has had the overt support of the parliament and the Iranian TV—an organisation controlled by the Supreme Leader, as well as the Guardian council whose duty is to supervise elections and six of those twelve members are chosen by the Leader, not to mention direct and indirect support of the Supreme Leader himself, while Mr Karoubi and Mr Mousavi were deprived of any peaceful public podiums: their internet sites are either hacked or shot down by the State Attorney, and their public lectures attacked by the Bassidgis and plain-clothed pressure group protected by the Military Ground Force whose chief is chosen by the Supreme Leader.
However, when on Saturday primary results were announced by the ministry of interior just a couple of hours after the closing of the ballot, a blood-curdling shock took the nation by surprise. Contrary to the norm and before the Guardian Council confirmed the veracity of the election, the Leader hastily congratulated “the president-elect,” in his words, chosen in an “epic demonstration of the will of the nation.” He had achieved his goal in different ways: for the first time in thirty years more than eighty percent of those qualified to vote had taken part in the polling, and more than sixty percent had voted for Mr Ahmadinejad. On Saturday afternoon the police organised a “manoeuvre of might” to frighten back the thousands of protesters loosely looming on the capital’s streets. When the protests developed into a vituperating mass, SMS networks were shot down, internet sites and blogs acting against this act were brought down, too. On Sunday morning mixed news came from different sources that more than a hundred mainstream political activists had been rounded up and again university students had been attacked. The very same afternoon Mr Ahmadinejad together with his supporters celebrated his victory that was already recognised by Mr Hamed Karzai, the president of Afghanistan who is running as a candidate for a second term in Afghanistan, not to mention that Russia and China followed Mr Karzai. In his victory speech Mr Ahmadinejad called the protesters “woodchips and straw that would be washed away by the flood of the nation.” Well, my brother who is doing his obligatory military service on the phone confided to me that he and many thousands of the like were forced to attend the rally.
Apparently Mr Ahmadinejad’s allies have turned a blind eye to the fact that the mass of voters appeared on the scene not to award legitimacy to the regime but to defend and assert the “republic” element of the Islamic Republic of Iran as the election was to choose a chief for the republic. It seems however that the many years of the nation’s frustration is not going to spare the culprit, especially now that the Supreme Leader has confirmed the health of the election.
The simmering demonstrators on Monday evening marked if not the biggest but one of the biggest spontaneous demonstrations with over a million people from all walks of life who were asking for revocation of the falsified election. But the special military unit and the para-military Bassidgi group did not tolerate these demonstrations and having rigged the votes ripped through the people by opening fire directly to the civilians which has so far left tens of people dead and many more injured. Foreign news agencies and journalists are banned from reporting the incidents by the ministry of interior. I am doing my best to restrain myself from using the political expression “coup d’état.”
I do not regret casting my vote this last Friday, I am rather happy and all the more proud that I’ve become part of a cause to show the real face of naked violence to the world. If ever I should have a regret it would be because I am not there among my people to shout slogans against the oppressor.
For all this thanks to Mr Ahmadinejad.
