February 05, 2004

Iran Vote Deal Unravels,Reformists Announce Boycott

Iranian reformists on Thursday denounced what they dubbed a "parliamentary coup" and vowed to boycott elections they said had been rigged, after a new bid to resolve Iran's worst political crisis for years unravelled.
[...]
Reformists argue the mass disqualification of candidates -- many of whom were accused of lacking loyalty to Islam and the constitution -- is a crude attempt by hard-liners to regain control of parliament which they lost to reformists in 2000 elections.
[...]
Hopes of an imminent solution to the crisis, which coincides with the 25th anniversary of Iran's Islamic revolution, were raised on Wednesday when government officials said the Guardian Council would review the candidate bans for a second time.
The protesting lawmakers, 130 of whom resigned this week, announced they would abandon their sit-in protest.

"With this sit-in we have forced those who oppose reforms to either hold the elections themselves or stage a military coup," said deputy parliament speaker Behzad Nabavi.

Public interest in the electoral row remains muted. Nearly seven years after Khatami's landslide election win, most Iranians have grown frustrated with the reformists' inability to overcome hardline opposition to reform.

The fiction, perpetrated on the West and on the Iranian people, that the Islamic government of Iran was being led by the peoples' votes and the voices of the reformers they elected in the last 7 years is about to be seen for the big lie it is.
While we can hope that we are hearing the rumblings of a grassroots democratic revolution in Iran, who knows?
My thoughts, hopes and prayers are with the people of Iran who long for liberty.
God (or Allah) knows you deserve it.
The day could come that our Coalition of the willing will have to send troops into Iran to topple this evil Islamist regime and for the very same reasons we had to take out Saddam.
But I'd really prefer for the Iranian people to do it themselves.
We've got our hands full in Iraq and Afghanistan militarily and the global Left whines a lot less if Democracy doesn't seem to be "imposed" by the U.S. military removal of a tyrannical dictatorship.
Lord knows why.
(Although the Liberal Left were the main group who got us all to swallow the new "reformed" Iran lie in the first place!)