« The Iranian Revolution: 2009 (more video) | Main | Marg bar Dictator! ("Death to the Dictator!) »

There is obviously something very big and existential going on in Iran right now, and it almost makes the question of whether the election was fraudulent moot. There are now over 3500 videos on YouTube from Iran with many, more posts on Twitter. It's clear that the people there are fired up for change (see the video below). But did Ahmadinejad really steal the election?

Two correspondents from The New America Foundation came out with articles today making the claim that the election indeed was NOT fraudulent and that Ahmadinejad won fair and square. Could it be?

From Flynt Leverett comes this:

Without any evidence, many U.S. politicians and "Iran experts" have dismissed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's reelection Friday, with 62.6 percent of the vote, as fraud.

They ignore the fact that Ahmadinejad's 62.6 percent of the vote in this year's election is essentially the same as the 61.69 percent he received in the final count of the 2005 presidential election, when he trounced former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. The shock of the "Iran experts" over Friday's results is entirely self-generated, based on their preferred assumptions and wishful thinking.

In particular, there was a final debate near the end of the two week campaign which heavily favored Ahmadinejad:

Like much of the Western media, most American "Iran experts" overstated Mir Hossein Mousavi’s "surge" over the campaign’s final weeks. More important, they were oblivious -- as in 2005 -- to Ahmadinejad's effectiveness as a populist politician and campaigner. American "Iran experts" missed how Ahmadinejad was perceived by most Iranians as having won the nationally televised debates with his three opponents -- especially his debate with Mousavi.

Before the debates, both Mousavi and Ahmadinejad campaign aides indicated privately that they perceived a surge of support for Mousavi; after the debates, the same aides concluded that Ahmadinejad's provocatively impressive performance and Mousavi's desultory one had boosted the incumbent's standing. Ahmadinejad's charge that Mousavi was supported by Rafsanjani’s sons -- widely perceived in Iranian society as corrupt figures -- seemed to play well with voters.

Meanwhile, Patrick Doherty wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post where he details the result of a Western poll taken during 10 days before the election (and that disastrous debate result for Mousavi) which he claims shows that Ahmadinejad should have won by a wide margin:

The election results in Iran may reflect the will of the Iranian people. Many experts are claiming that the margin of victory of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the result of fraud or manipulation, but our nationwide public opinion survey of Iranians three weeks before the vote showed Ahmadinejad leading by a more than 2 to 1 margin -- greater than his actual apparent margin of victory in Friday's election.

Independent and uncensored nationwide surveys of Iran are rare. Typically, pre-election polls there are either conducted or monitored by the government and are notoriously untrustworthy. By contrast, the poll undertaken by our nonprofit organizations from May 11 to May 20 was the third in a series over the past two years. Conducted by telephone from a neighboring country, field work was carried out in Farsi by a polling company whose work in the region for ABC News and the BBC has received an Emmy award. Our polling was funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

Much commentary has portrayed Iranian youth and the Internet as harbingers of change in this election. But our poll found that only a third of Iranians even have access to the Internet, while 18-to-24-year-olds comprised the strongest voting bloc for Ahmadinejad of all age groups.

Not being a polling expert, it's difficult to dispute these findings, although the poll did suffer from 42% of the recipients not responding. If nearly half of the people you speak to hang up the phone, is the poll even legitimate?

Well, Juan Cole took a swipe at these findings, and although he makes sense, it's important to read the comments section, too, which are almost completely in favor of accepting these election results:

But as a mere social historian I would say that the poll actually tends to confirm some of my doubts about the announced electoral tallies.

The poll did not find that Ahmadinejad had majority support. It found that the level of support for the incumbent was 34%, with Mousavi at 14%. Here's the important point: 60% of the 27% who said they were undecided favored political reform.

But as one of the readers in the comments section wrote, who was considered a reformer? Ahmadinejad or Mousavi? And another reader asks:

Additionally, Moiussavi claimed victory before polls closed. Now this purportedly was because his campaign was notified by their Interior Ministry that they had won. Apparently the Moussavi campaign was OK with this. However, later when the result was announced the other way, all of a sudden the speed of the announcement meant that this "proved" fraud because there was no way the count could be done so fast. So, Moussavi ahead, sure they can count that fast; Ahmedinajad ahead (several hours later), no way they could count that fast.

He makes a damn good point!

...and yet we still have thousands of these heart-breaking videos to contend with:

So what is really going on over there? Could this be an existential moment for the regime, or will this all just die down in a week or so? Wouldn't it be nice to get the religious zealots out of politics and governing once and for all and give the people the freedom they deserve?

One thing for certain is that the technology of the early 21st century (YouTube, Twitter, etc), has changed forever the relationship between the people and their (repressive) government.

Georgia10 at DailyKos wrote a very eloquent post on this very topic:

The saying popping up over the last several hours has already become cliche: the revolution will not be televised, it will be Twittered. Stripping away the hyperbole of that statement and we are left with the very real and grounded fact that the way citizens across the world organize, react, and participate has forever been altered by the cornucopia of 21st century mediums, each of which presents a new platform for how citizens interact with and even select their government.

Read on...

Name (required)
Email
Website
Remember personal info? Yes   No
Comments

home | music | democracy | earth | money | projects | about | contact

Site design by Matthew Fries | © 2003-23 Consilience Productions. All Rights Reserved.
Consilience Productions, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.
All contributions are fully tax deductible.