Did “elections” change anything?

Reports and pictures taken from last Friday’s elections in Iran negate that it was really an election day. Many polling stations were seen empty at different hours of the day. No long queues were formed.  It was just another Friday in Tehran and other cities. As it was expected these elections did not stir much in the Iranian people, leaving many polling stations close to empty. Ayatollahs’ threatening words did not work this time. Just a few days before the “elections”  Khamenei's religious decrees (fatwas) to say that participating in elections is a religious obligation, blank ballots violate Sharia law, meant that boycotting the elections could bring severe  consequences. Nevertheless the turnout was very low.

Last week's sham elections was met with renewed anger and hatred by the Iranian people toward the clerical regime and its factions.  A New York Times reporter wrote that many of the poor people in Tehran showed their dissent by staying at home. At a school near Shoosh Square “only a handful of voters filled in the 46 names that have to be written in for the two elections”. This reporter quotes an Iranian journalist: “The poor in the south have lost all hope for change.” And quoting a vendor who sells children’s clothing he emphasized: “Here, people don’t vote because they feel left out.”

 Elections in Iran have always been associated with fraud and fabrications to announce an astronomical participation rate. But this year, even the government's own bodies are talking about the futility of elections. Government run Fars News Agency, announced that until 4 pm, Tehran time, only 1.5 million or around 17% had participated in the elections. Although, upon previous experiences, the real figure is much lower but still it clearly shows the low turnout in this year elections. Iran’s Minister of Interior had announced the previous day that 62% will come out to vote in Tehran

The crisis among Ayatollahs intensified after they had no choice but to retreat from developing a nuclear weapon. The crisis was promoted, in last week elections, into a power struggle between Rafsanjani and Khamenei, Iran’s two most powerful figures.  Khamenei's supremacy and domination within the regime has been undermined and the taboo of challenging the” Supreme Leader” and discussing his replacement has been broken. It has even now become part of the daily discourse in the parliament.

An opinion article in the Forbs magazine described the scene which was similar in different cities as: “By not voting in today's Parliamentary and Assembly of Experts elections, Iranian people are telling the world that they reject the mullahs' regime in its entirety, former Iranian political prisoner Farzad Madadzadeh wrote Friday for Forbes Opinion.”

The article continues, "On Friday, March 14, 2008 at around 10AM I went to a polling station in Jannat Abad, in western Tehran. Parliamentary elections were taking place on that day, just as [today] in Iran. The polling station was a school. Six individuals were present to monitor the voting process and four others were casting their ballots,"

 The reason Why the Iranian people did not buy the spectrum of Mullahs and officials pleading and calling on the people to actively participate in the elections was the “candidates” themselves. All the names and figures on the rosters and bill boards brought to memory an immense record of coercion and extortion. The candidates of the rival ruling factions have all, in the past three decades, played major roles in the crimes of the religious fascism ruling Iran. No one in Iran, really, believes in the elections for the parliament and the Assembly of Experts which are nothing but a rivalry and a power struggle between various executioners and perpetrators of crime against humanity.

A realistic assessment points to ongoing crises entangling Iran’s Ayatollahs; the always looming threat of social uprisings reignited by an extremely impatient population and the stubborn economic recession are the building blocks of these crises. In fear of popular protests, and mass uprisings, as occurred in 2009 presidential elections, the Iranian government brought on the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), the Bassij militias and other suppressive security and intelligence forces to the streets under the pretext of providing security to the ballot boxes to create a climate of terror and fear to prevent incidents of popular anger and hatred

Iran's election that reflects a power struggle between Ayatollah Khamenei and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was discussed by Linda Chavez, a former White House director of public liaison, in her article in the Hill, "While some in the West see the Rouhani-Rafsanjani faction as 'moderate,' the fact is neither man behaved as a moderate in office, engaging in the same extrajudicial killing and torture of dissidents and pursuing the same goal of an expansionist, nuclear-armed Iran. The fight is not so much one of ideology as it is a power struggle, with the Rouhani-Rafsanjani group seeing an opening to the West that helps the Iranian economy as consolidating their hold over the people."

regardless of the outcome of the sham elections for Iran's parliament and the Assembly of Experts, which have no legitimacy whatsoever in the eyes of the Iranian people, ultimately, the rule of Ayatollahs will be weakened in its entirety, its internal crises will intensify, and the exasperation and anger of the population toward the mullahs' corrupt and criminal factions will deepen even further.

“Elections” in Iran did not, and will not, bring real changes. It will be the glorious power of people which will ultimately push the Mullahs back into their graves. Real reform would be possible only through the wholesale rejection of the theocracy.