In Iran, the hardliner has it.
The AP's Kathy Gannon reports that:
The Interior Ministry gave Ahmadinejad 62.2 percent of the vote over his more moderate rival, Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, who had nearly 35.3 percent. The ministry posted a notice in its headquarters declaring Ahmadinejad the winner of Friday's runoff. The rest of the ballots were deemed invalid.
On the face of it, this seems like a very funny outcome. Ahmadinejad won only 19% of the (official) first-round vote, in an election in which, according to reports, conservatives turned out strongly while reformers had been encouraged to boycott the proceedings. One would expect that some of those liberal or reformist abstainers would have turned out in the second round out of fear of an Ahmadinejad victory, while Moeen's and Karroubi's first-round votes would have been redirected to the "moderate" Rafsanjani, just as Leonid Jospin's votes went to Chirac in the French presidential election run-off in 2002. In fact, turnout fell (to 47% according to the Washington Post; to 56% according to al-Jazeera), and the hardline share more than tripled.
On the other hand, complaints about potential vote fraud have hardly cracked the Western media this time (so far, silence at The Corner). And even if the lopsided hardline win seems logically implausible on the surface, the possibility of the authorities fudging the vote by the 12% or more that marks Ahmadinejad's majority looks similarly unlikely, at least given initial reports. The US State Department agrees, judging by its resigned response:
In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Joanne Moore indicated the result would not change the U.S. view of Iran, and what it considered to be a fundamentally flawed election that refused to accept scores of candidates, particularly women.
"With the conclusion of the elections in Iran, we have seen nothing that sways us from our view that Iran is out of step with the rest of the region in the currents of freedom and liberty that have been so apparent in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon," Moore said.
The first concern in the West must be what the election outcome means for future nuke talks. But, even on that score, the damage may well have already been done by the upset inherent in the first round of voting and the Parliamentary (Majlis) elections in 2004, in which reformists only one 28% of the seats for which they were permitted to run. The AP reports that "The pragmatic Rafsanjani has appeared more willing to negotiate on the nuclear program. But a Foreign Ministry spokesman Friday underlined that the suspension is temporary and that enrichment will eventually be restarted no matter who wins the election." Since conservatives already dominate the Majlis, the presidential outcome may have been little more than window dressing to the outcome of ongoing talks between Iran and the US/EU-3.
Maybe this election outcome is immeasurably terrible; given Ahmadinejad's conservative and military hardline history and the excited response of Islamic hardliners in other parts of the world, that's certainly a valid interpretation. But I'm not wholly convinced of it. (Iranian bloggers, whose opinions are more relevant than mine, seem to have mixed opinions on the both the legitimacy of the vote and on what the Ahmadinejad victory means.) One of the edifying, or at least interesting, things about the Iranian campaign, from my perspective as a Western liberal, was just how reformist it was in its emphasis. The candidates went around making pie-in-the-sky promises, running glossy, secular media campaigns (Rafsanjani, the best-funded candidate, actually had rollergirls handing out flyers in Tehran traffic according to one report I read), and talking about moving ahead with more reform in an attempt to appeal to voters and to surmount apathy among youth. If anything, the candidate field criticized outgoing president Khatami for not being reformist enough.
Of course, Ahmadinejad was the exception to all this, with his low-budget campaign, his focus on frugalism and the need to ensure a basic level of economic dignity to all Iranians, and his embrace of Revolutionary ideals. Either the first-round vote was heavily rigged, or the other candidates seriously misjudged the desires of the majority of Iranians, failing to adequately compete for the conservative populist niche. But in the run-off, even Ahmadinejad, whether honestly or out of necessity, tried to allay the fears of his reformist critics. Thursday's New York Times reported him lightly mocking frightened reformers:
"They say if I become president, I will shut down the Internet...Why would they say that? My wife and children are constantly on the Internet. They don't give me a chance to use the phone line. My wife loves doing her research on the Internet."
The imagery there is telling: of the indulgent, henpecked husband, slightly bemused by, but open to, modern technology. Part of Ahmadinejad's redistributive platform also involved the extention of state-sponsered economic benefits to women. (Though basically irrelevent, it's at least interesting that Ahmadinejad is also the first non-cleric to assume the Iranian presidency since 1981.) Also worth noting are the widely varying voter responses quoted in this Knight-Ridder article:
Even in northern Tehran, where women flout Islamic laws on modest dress by wearing brightly colored scarves and snug, short overcoats, Ahmadinejad voters said they preferred their candidate because he'd honed a reputation as an honest and effective mayor.
"I don't want there to be nepotism, for someone who finished high school being assigned to a very high post," said Elnaz Ashtari, 23, a fashionably dressed dentist. "Ahmadinejad says he'll clean house."
The apparently solid rejection of Rafsanjani seems itself to be a sort of protest, a refusal to settle for a cynical, over-financed career politician whose earlier, nonreformist presidency inspired neither conservatives nor reformers and who had lost a bid for a Parliamentary seat just 16 months earlier. (Nor does the result look like an example of the tyranny of a tiny minority of the reform movement who won't settle for a consensus candidate, charges hurled by moderate liberals in the wake of the 2002 French runoff election and the 2000 US election. If the results are to be believed, Rafsanjani was very solidly rejected, failing to even double his vote share between balloting rounds.)
At the very least, the vote is a major slap to Washington: both to the ramped-up American presence in the Middle East since 911 and to Bush and Rice's stupid pre-election bigfooting about reform and freedom and the rest of it. If exit interviews are to be believed, it's also prime evidence of the universal danger of allowing liberalism to become identified with elitism (and "nepotism") while conservatives claim the mantle of populism and communion with the downtrodden and the traditional. Ahmadinejad may not actually manage to do much to help Iran's poor. On the other hand, he may decide that helping lift economic conditions requires some rapprochement with the West. He may be utterly powerless against Khomeini. Or he may be able to use his proximity to the hardliners to increase the nominal power of the presidency. He may be a liberal's nightmare. But if there's any legitimacy at all to Iran's electoral process -- the process that wrung concessions out of him not to reverse earlier reformist gains in the final stretch of the campaign -- then he might not be. It should at least be an interesting test.
The Interior Ministry gave Ahmadinejad 62.2 percent of the vote over his more moderate rival, Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, who had nearly 35.3 percent. The ministry posted a notice in its headquarters declaring Ahmadinejad the winner of Friday's runoff. The rest of the ballots were deemed invalid.
On the face of it, this seems like a very funny outcome. Ahmadinejad won only 19% of the (official) first-round vote, in an election in which, according to reports, conservatives turned out strongly while reformers had been encouraged to boycott the proceedings. One would expect that some of those liberal or reformist abstainers would have turned out in the second round out of fear of an Ahmadinejad victory, while Moeen's and Karroubi's first-round votes would have been redirected to the "moderate" Rafsanjani, just as Leonid Jospin's votes went to Chirac in the French presidential election run-off in 2002. In fact, turnout fell (to 47% according to the Washington Post; to 56% according to al-Jazeera), and the hardline share more than tripled.
On the other hand, complaints about potential vote fraud have hardly cracked the Western media this time (so far, silence at The Corner). And even if the lopsided hardline win seems logically implausible on the surface, the possibility of the authorities fudging the vote by the 12% or more that marks Ahmadinejad's majority looks similarly unlikely, at least given initial reports. The US State Department agrees, judging by its resigned response:
In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Joanne Moore indicated the result would not change the U.S. view of Iran, and what it considered to be a fundamentally flawed election that refused to accept scores of candidates, particularly women.
"With the conclusion of the elections in Iran, we have seen nothing that sways us from our view that Iran is out of step with the rest of the region in the currents of freedom and liberty that have been so apparent in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon," Moore said.
The first concern in the West must be what the election outcome means for future nuke talks. But, even on that score, the damage may well have already been done by the upset inherent in the first round of voting and the Parliamentary (Majlis) elections in 2004, in which reformists only one 28% of the seats for which they were permitted to run. The AP reports that "The pragmatic Rafsanjani has appeared more willing to negotiate on the nuclear program. But a Foreign Ministry spokesman Friday underlined that the suspension is temporary and that enrichment will eventually be restarted no matter who wins the election." Since conservatives already dominate the Majlis, the presidential outcome may have been little more than window dressing to the outcome of ongoing talks between Iran and the US/EU-3.
Maybe this election outcome is immeasurably terrible; given Ahmadinejad's conservative and military hardline history and the excited response of Islamic hardliners in other parts of the world, that's certainly a valid interpretation. But I'm not wholly convinced of it. (Iranian bloggers, whose opinions are more relevant than mine, seem to have mixed opinions on the both the legitimacy of the vote and on what the Ahmadinejad victory means.) One of the edifying, or at least interesting, things about the Iranian campaign, from my perspective as a Western liberal, was just how reformist it was in its emphasis. The candidates went around making pie-in-the-sky promises, running glossy, secular media campaigns (Rafsanjani, the best-funded candidate, actually had rollergirls handing out flyers in Tehran traffic according to one report I read), and talking about moving ahead with more reform in an attempt to appeal to voters and to surmount apathy among youth. If anything, the candidate field criticized outgoing president Khatami for not being reformist enough.
Of course, Ahmadinejad was the exception to all this, with his low-budget campaign, his focus on frugalism and the need to ensure a basic level of economic dignity to all Iranians, and his embrace of Revolutionary ideals. Either the first-round vote was heavily rigged, or the other candidates seriously misjudged the desires of the majority of Iranians, failing to adequately compete for the conservative populist niche. But in the run-off, even Ahmadinejad, whether honestly or out of necessity, tried to allay the fears of his reformist critics. Thursday's New York Times reported him lightly mocking frightened reformers:
"They say if I become president, I will shut down the Internet...Why would they say that? My wife and children are constantly on the Internet. They don't give me a chance to use the phone line. My wife loves doing her research on the Internet."
The imagery there is telling: of the indulgent, henpecked husband, slightly bemused by, but open to, modern technology. Part of Ahmadinejad's redistributive platform also involved the extention of state-sponsered economic benefits to women. (Though basically irrelevent, it's at least interesting that Ahmadinejad is also the first non-cleric to assume the Iranian presidency since 1981.) Also worth noting are the widely varying voter responses quoted in this Knight-Ridder article:
Even in northern Tehran, where women flout Islamic laws on modest dress by wearing brightly colored scarves and snug, short overcoats, Ahmadinejad voters said they preferred their candidate because he'd honed a reputation as an honest and effective mayor.
"I don't want there to be nepotism, for someone who finished high school being assigned to a very high post," said Elnaz Ashtari, 23, a fashionably dressed dentist. "Ahmadinejad says he'll clean house."
The apparently solid rejection of Rafsanjani seems itself to be a sort of protest, a refusal to settle for a cynical, over-financed career politician whose earlier, nonreformist presidency inspired neither conservatives nor reformers and who had lost a bid for a Parliamentary seat just 16 months earlier. (Nor does the result look like an example of the tyranny of a tiny minority of the reform movement who won't settle for a consensus candidate, charges hurled by moderate liberals in the wake of the 2002 French runoff election and the 2000 US election. If the results are to be believed, Rafsanjani was very solidly rejected, failing to even double his vote share between balloting rounds.)
At the very least, the vote is a major slap to Washington: both to the ramped-up American presence in the Middle East since 911 and to Bush and Rice's stupid pre-election bigfooting about reform and freedom and the rest of it. If exit interviews are to be believed, it's also prime evidence of the universal danger of allowing liberalism to become identified with elitism (and "nepotism") while conservatives claim the mantle of populism and communion with the downtrodden and the traditional. Ahmadinejad may not actually manage to do much to help Iran's poor. On the other hand, he may decide that helping lift economic conditions requires some rapprochement with the West. He may be utterly powerless against Khomeini. Or he may be able to use his proximity to the hardliners to increase the nominal power of the presidency. He may be a liberal's nightmare. But if there's any legitimacy at all to Iran's electoral process -- the process that wrung concessions out of him not to reverse earlier reformist gains in the final stretch of the campaign -- then he might not be. It should at least be an interesting test.
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