Following the official announcement that the incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won Iran?s hotly contested presidential election, a firestorm of spontaneous and organised indignation erupted in Tehran and spread to other cities. All circumstantial evidence buttresses the complaint of the main opposition candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, that the results were fixed through blatant fraud.
Some 85% of the Iranian electorate chose to exercise their franchise in this election, an unprecedented turnout indicating that people did want the ?change? that the reformist Mousavi promised through relaxation of Islamist strictures on personal life and improvement of the deteriorating economy. Universally, huge voter turnouts are associated with a definite anti-incumbent preference of electors. The declaration by the interior ministry that Ahmadinejad won a landslide 62% out of this humungous turnout is a mockery of known laws of politics.
It is hard to imagine why so many Iranians would come out to vote so overwhelmingly in favour of a president who bungled the economy and repressed social freedoms in the name of an Islamic revolution that has long gone sour. More than 70% of Iranians are below the age of 30, a cohort that wants to be freed from stifling clerical stipulations on what they should wear, read, watch and love. Mousavi?s movement drew support from the young, especially women, who have been the principal victims of the 1979 revolution. Ahmadinejad?s image as a religious hardliner and mantle-bearer of Ayatollah Khomeini won few admirers among the country?s youth, not even those from among the poor and in rural areas.
Unless one is blind to the youthful demography of Iran, the election result defies logic.
Iran is one of the best Internet-connected societies in the Middle East, with as many as 23 million out of the total population of 68 million having access to the worldwide Web. Mousavi?s election campaign tapped into this large voter base and used all the social networking avenues that were trademarks of Barack Obama?s exploits in the US. The flow of information in a net-dense country like Iran could not be regulated easily by the theocratic establishment that threw its weight behind
Ahmadinejad. Firewalling Web sites like Facebook and shutting down mobile telephony were desperate last-minute and post-result shenanigans of the Ayatollahs to deny Mousavi the inevitable victory he would have enjoyed had the process been fair.
Some suspicious events also buttress the illegality of this election?s result. For a manual counting method to sort out 40 million paper ballots, it would have taken nearly 16 hours. As per one estimate, the Iranian electoral system is capable of counting only 5 million ballots every 2 hours. The very short time lag between closure of polls and anointment of Ahmadinejad as the winner by a thumping margin implies total manipulation by the state. The extraordinary leads with which
Ahmadinejad is claimed to have defeated his rivals even in their respective home towns is farcical.
Iran?s elections are semi-democratic in any case, since the Guardian Council of Ayatollahs pre-screens candidates before they can stand for election. What is worse this time is that the clerical and military establishment had to intervene twice?once at the candidate selection stage and once after the people had expressed their will for change. A mockery of democracy has been compounded by a sham.
Ahmadinejad?s re-election, without requiring even a second round run-off, which had occurred during his controversial win in 2005, is evidence that senior clerics rallied behind him to snuff out Mousavi?s strong chances. When the Ayatollahs did permit fair elections in 1997, the public handed them a shock by electing moderate candidate Mohammad Khatami, who went on to govern with domestic and foreign policies that contradicted strict autocratic controls. With Mousavi taking on threatening Obama-like shades of changing the system, the clerics had to intercede for their own survival. If there was an ?Obama effect? on this election, it was in the form of a forewarning for the ancient regime.
The history of Iran since 1906 is a saga of people?s aspirations for a democratic polity butting heads with monarchical and, later, revolutionary roadblocks. Socio-economic transformations in the last three decades have made the Iranian people more radical than the conservative and militarist upholders of the 1979 revolution. When an election gets so brazenly stolen from an expectant population, the core legitimacy of a fear-based regime takes a mortal blow. Ahmadinejad may be able to impose an artificial calm on the streets in the coming days through brute force, but he will preside over a powder keg that can implode and throw him out along with the revolutionary bathwater.
The author is associate professor of world politics at the Jindal Global Law School