IRAN
VOTES A dash of discord mixed with
competition By Kaveh L
Afrasiabi
"It is not a revolution in
the literal sense of the term, which is, people
getting on their feet and redirecting themselves.
It is the insurrection of people ... who want to
lift the formidable weight we all bear, but more
particularly weigh on them, 'the weight of the
entire world order'." - French
Philosopher, Michel Foucault
This week, as Iran celebrates the 29th
anniversary of the Islamic Revolution that deposed
the archaic one-man dictatorship, sustained for a
quarter of century by Western powers professing
democratic values, the world is once again
reminded of the trans-Iran, ie, regional and
global, dimensions of this revolution -
intuitively detected by French philosopher Michel
Foucault, who
observed first-hand the
revolution's historical unfolding in 1978-1979.
"The Islamic Revolution belongs to the
whole of humanity," Iran's president Mahmud
Ahmadinejad has stated, adding that since the
revolution there have been popular elections
almost every year based on the principle of
"popular sovereignty" (mardom salari) even
during the "tough years" of the Iran-Iraq war
(1980-1988).
Iranians vote for candidates
running for 290 seats in the Majlis (Parliament)
on March 14. The runup has already been marked by
some controversy. The Guardian Council, which
oversees electoral rolls, recently confirmed that
more than 2,400 candidates would not be allowed to
participate. The council comprises influential
clerics and lawmakers. Half of its members are
appointed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali
al-Khamenei and the other half by the Parliament.
Three former ministers, a dozen provincial
governors, prominent reformists, and members of
Parliament who worked under reformist president
Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005) are among those
disqualified.
Also, for the first time
since the 1979 revolution, a member of Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini's family is among the
disqualified nominees. Ali Eshraghi, a grandson of
Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic, was
rejected because of "lack of loyalty to Islam and
the constitution".
Nearly three decades of
Islamist state-making and nation-building has
resulted in a complex new reality that defies
simple generalizations, let alone binary labels,
such as "theocratic" that often result in
distorted images of the Islamic Republic as a
closed, hermetical society.
On the
contrary, the revolution's founding of a political
society with its internal logic of political
competition and pluralism, based on a republican
system of separation of powers and checks and
balances, as well as regular, albeit controlled,
elections, clearly belies such caricatures of
post-revolutionary Iran that typically narrow
focus on the system's deficiencies and
shortcomings and thus lose sight of historical
evolution.
The institutional heteronomy of
the states, the complex relationship between state
and civil society in contemporary Iran, the
evolution of political parties, groups and
interest groups, the systemic input of regional
and external crises or obstacles to the normal
evolution of Iran's political society [1], etc,
each requires a careful and critical scrutiny
unencumbered by restricted methodologies or,
worse, stereotypical generalizations fed by
normative and political biases.
The fact
is that political competition drives Iran's
post-revolutionary politics, but some basic
consensus underlies the Islamist system in which
those competitions occur, a consensus stemming
from common beliefs, such as with respect to
Iran's independence, and overlapping interests,
such as with respect to Iran's basic national
interests.
The principle of Islamic
democracy, enunciated in the Islamic constitution,
has translated into 28 electoral contests in the
regime's short history, with practically each
election representing a challenge of "Islamic
democracy". That is, how to maintain a vibrant
republican and participatory system and respond to
the needs of the 21st century, in light of Iran's
heterogeneous population and never subsiding
regional and international challenges?
Iran is, after all, a diverse society, a
country of about 70 million people, consisting of
a mosaic of ethnic, political and diverse
ideological groups. Diversity has been a source of
the system's strength, but at the same time has
been a source of weakness and conflict.
Yet, to its credit, the ship of Islamic
revolution has sailed on through a torrent of
multiple crises, the American hostage crisis at
the height of the revolution, Iraq's invasion, the
1990 Gulf war, coup plots and assassinations of
its leaders, ie, a president and a prime minister,
and dozens of its lawmakers, and the shock waves
of the US invasion of Iran's neighbors, the
constant bombardment of military threats (by both
US and Israel), and the mounting pressure of
international sanctions over Tehran's nuclear
program.
What is more, the Islamic
revolution, premised on the principle of opposing
global hegemony and an unjust world order, has
expanded its wings through tedious and patient
work, achieving impressive results in Iraq,
Lebanon, as well as in cultivating ties with other
anti-status quo regimes beyond its immediate
region, in Asia, Africa, Latin and Central
America.
While a balance sheet of the
revolution's achievements and "failures" belongs
elsewhere, on the other hand, it is patently
obvious that the thesis of "failed revolution" so
prevalent in the West needs re-examination. [2] At
a time when India is seemingly abdicating its
historical self-understanding and role in Third
World politics in favor of a new alignment with
the West, Iran is increasingly stepping into the
void of Third World leadership, given the growing
North-South gap and the inequities of the
post-Cold War globalization.
For sure,
Iran can contribute much more to the yet to be
fully articulated vision of an alternative
globalization, particularly on the economic front,
in tandem with the revolution's globalist mission.
The revolution has a multiple, internal and
external, unfinished agenda, and yet despite the
setbacks, the limitations, the imposition of
distorted interpretations, and so on, the glass of
revolution remains half full, by the blood and
honor and steadfast determination of a whole
generation of Iranians.
Kaveh L
Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After
Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy
(Westview Press) and co-author of "Negotiating
Iran's Nuclear Populism", Brown Journal of World
Affairs, Volume XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with
Mustafa Kibaroglu. He also wrote "Keeping Iran's
nuclear potential latent", Harvard International
Review, and is author of Iran's Nuclear
Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction.
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