Allen L Roland

Something important happened in Iran this weekend and its color is green. The idea of adopting the color Green was begun, for the first time in an Iranian election, by supporters of Mr Moussavi, who apparently lost to fundamentalist president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a disputed election. However, in the process, Green has now become the color of national protest:

Something important happened this weekend in Iran's presidential election and it resembled the tactics, organization, mud slinging and perhaps even vote manipulation of recent American national elections.

As the Washington Post reported ~ "As Iranians go to the polls Friday to choose a president, the country is more deeply polarized than at any time since the Islamic revolution that overthrew the shah 30 years ago. After a bitter campaign that included personal attacks on some of Iran's leading families, both sides are preparing to contest the results, and many Iranians wonder whether the social and economic rifts exposed by the election will deepen."

About the candidates for president

" Ahmadinejad had turned the Iranian economy upside down, making sure that advantages flowed to the lower class. His government has increased state wages and pensions and has made health insurance free for 22 million people. He derided economists who blamed him for high inflation and unemployment, saying that they are tied to the higher classes and that his goal is to "spread justice."

His leading challenger was Mousavi, an urbane, soft-spoken architect who was prime minister from 1981 to 1989. Though out of power for two decades, Mousavi was in many ways the Iranian establishment's candidate.

Mousavi's political foot soldiers, in turn, were disgruntled middle-class youths, intellectuals, artists and academics who have been alienated by the current government's radical rhetoric and pervasive restrictions on personal freedom, such as police controls on the way people dress, the banning of books and the disciplining of dissident students.

The result was a confrontation not just between Iran's haves and have-nots, but between the old revolutionaries who seized power from the shah and a new cadre of radicals seeking to dislodge them. "

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/11/AR2009061104106.html?sid=ST2009061104183

Sounds familiar, does it not. It's the disenchanted youth versus the establishment with Moussavi riding that green wave of change.

But do remember, Iran is a Theocracy ~ not a Democracy ~ and it appears, as Newsweek reports, " that the working classes and the rural poor ~ the people who do not much look or act or talk like most Iranians ~ voted overwhelmingly for the scruffy, scrappy president who looks and acts and talks more or less like them. And while Mousavi and his supporters are protesting and even scuffling with police, they are just as likely to be overwhelmed in the streets as they were at the polls." http://www.newsweek.com/id/201934

80% of the people voted and most of them supposedly for Ahmadinejad but, once again, remember Mr. Ahmadinejad, is the first non-clerical president in more than 25 years, and basks in the support of Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who called on Iranians to vote for an anti-Western candidate.

The Ayatollah ultimately calls the shots in Iran, where the president can only influence policy, not decide it ~ and that probably extends to who wins an election.

As Juan Cole reports today in Salon ~ " So, there are protests against an allegedly stolen election. The Basij paramilitary thugs and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards will break some heads. Unless there has been a sea change in Iran, the theocrats may well get away with this soft coup for the moment. But the regime's legitimacy will take a critical hit, and its ultimate demise may have been hastened, over the next decade or two." http://www.truthout.org/061409Z

Democracy is a slow and painful process and most certainly within a Theocracy ~ but this was a giant first step which could eventually lead to the greening of Iran.

Allen L Roland http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/2009/06/14.html

Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private consultations ( allen@allenroland.com )

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net

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Allen Roland’s weblog: http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/
Website: www.allenroland.com
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