Four Reasons to Encourage Participation in the 94 Elections and Their Critique

From the collection of articles published on the eve of the 94 elections, it appears that at least some of the opponents of the Islamic Republic do not wish to boycott this election or provide recommendations to Iranian citizens in this regard. Of course, Iranian citizens who oppose and criticize are divided into two groups: those who oppose and those who support participation, as always. However, religious and non-religious reformist individuals and groups, like in the past two decades, believe in voting and recommend it to others in the form of political analysis and commentary, as well as through party and group statements. In this process, individuals and groups sometimes enter the arena with specific proposals, such as efforts to prevent certain candidates from being elected to the Assembly of Experts. Another group also points to the importance of the two institutions, the Islamic Consultative Assembly and the Assembly of Experts, or increasing government supporters in the parliament. By examining the literature of these groups, one can encounter four reasons for participation in the elections: national security, practicing democracy, solving problems through the ballot box, and the low likelihood of fraud in vote counting. Supporters of reform, both governmental and non-governmental, argue that despite all its flaws, the government has kept the country secure in the current crisis of the Middle East. They say that to maintain this security, participation in the political process is necessary. They compare Iran with Syria and Iraq and attribute the credibility of not being at war (which, of course, does not mean security: security is not just the absence of war) to the government and the political processes managed by it. In contrast to this argument, seven points can be mentioned that show that participation in elections or the policies of the Islamic Republic have no relation to the country's security (and in many cases, these policies have been against it), and essentially the current rulers of the Islamic Republic cannot attribute the credibility of not having internal or external wars to themselves: 1. Obama's foreign policy and that of European countries over the past seven years has been negotiation and reconciliation with the Islamic Republic, and it was with this policy that an agreement was ultimately reached between 5+1 and the Islamic Republic to resolve the nuclear issue. If another president had been in power in the U.S., it is uncertain whether the situation would have reached this point. 2. The absence of civil war like in Syria is not due to the government of Khamenei being more popular than Bashar al-Assad's government, but rather due to the dominance of a discourse of non-violence among most opponents of the regime since the 1990s. On the other hand, the rulers and their propaganda apparatus have constantly provoked opponents to violent actions through repression (up to executions and running over people with cars or throwing them off bridges). 3. The parliament or executive power, which are elected in Iran through engineered voting, do not have a central role in the country's decisions, and ultimately it is the leadership apparatus and the security and military institutions under its supervision that drive decision-making. In this regard, changing or even shutting down these two institutions in Iran does not significantly affect the country's security. 4. The Bush administration's mistake in attacking Iraq may have been the key factor in Obama's rise to power and the public's opposition in the U.S. to another war in the Middle East. The absence of a military attack on Iran was not due to the reasonable behavior of the IRGC (quite the opposite), nor due to the wisdom of the country's leader (which is contrary to his domestic and foreign policy), nor due to Khamenei's foreign policy (hostility towards the West and ambitions in the region), but simply because of the unpopularity of another war in the U.S. Of course, the IRGC has made every effort in recent years to ignite another war in the Persian Gulf (missile launches near U.S. ships, detaining American sailors and staging scenes to humiliate them, and destroying a model of an American ship), but the restraint of American officials has prevented the disaster of war. 5. The Khamenei government has endangered Iran's national security by pursuing a non-transparent and deceptive nuclear program for 20 years, and if it were not for the restraint of Western governments and the centrality of diplomacy in the 5+1 group's program against the Islamic Republic, there would have been a possibility for Western governments to attack nuclear facilities. Ultimately, it was the sanctions that forced the government to enter negotiations, not the Islamic Republic's policy of de-escalation (which did not exist during Ahmadinejad's time). Therefore, the credibility of not being at war should not be attributed to warmongers like Khamenei. The Khamenei government is currently seriously involved in three internal wars in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. 6. Due to the presence of a significant portion of the country's population that dreams of democracy and has an optimistic view of relations with the West, those Western governments or parties that think about transformation in Iran hope that the people themselves will be the source of this transformation. This section gives those who advocate diplomacy against the Iranian government an upper hand over those who believe the government should be overthrown from outside. 7. There is a difference between the security of Iran, the security of the Islamic Republic, and the security of Khamenei's government. Engineered elections contribute to increasing the security coefficient of the government and to some extent the system, but there is no evidence that engineered elections help the national security of the country. Engineered elections keep the gap between the nation and the government and the gap between classes and ethnicities alive, and only a spark or weakness in the repressive machine can unleash the dormant contradictions. Practicing Democracy After two decades of unsuccessful efforts by pro-democracy forces to initiate the democratization process through participation in elections, it is now clear that engineered elections within the framework of the Islamic Republic are not a practice of democracy. Perhaps in the 1980s, when many groups were not accustomed to participating in elections and some opponents did not see the ballot box as a suitable method for change, this was true, but when in a society part of the people goes to the polls every two years and sees no change in the rulers' behavior, one must naturally doubt the effectiveness of this process in increasing the level of democracy. Albert Einstein defined madness as doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. When individuals participate in elections dozens of times and expect a different result each time, one can naturally doubt their rationality. Change Through the Ballot Box Another reason for participating in the elections is that if we want to achieve change in Iran without violence and war and costs, the only path is through the ballot box. In this statement, there are three problems in the context of Iran: 1. First, peaceful and non-violent change is not necessarily possible through the ballot box. Civil disobedience, general strikes, boycotting government ceremonies and distancing from them, shutting down businesses, operating within civil institutions and distancing from government institutions, boycotting government institutions in everyday life, and hundreds of other methods used by civil movements are alternative methods of participating in elections for change that have nothing to do with participating in engineered elections. 2. The above statement confuses the ballot box in general with the ballot box in the Islamic Republic. Change can be achieved through the ballot box, but in a democratic and free world, not in authoritarian and totalitarian regimes that engineer every event and strip it of meaning. Vote engineering in Iran is carried out through mechanisms such as supervisory oversight, restricting the four freedoms, and eliminating the possibility of measuring election results (with the presence of independent observers or international observers during the voting and counting stages). 3. Change through the ballot box is low-cost if such a path is possible. So far, despite dozens of elections in the Islamic Republic, no change has been realized in the country, and rather in some periods, the economic, political, cultural, and social situation has worsened. Essentially, the slogan of the opponents of reform after the 1997 elections was that "nothing has changed." Change through the ballot box is low-cost, but the path to this change is closed under the Islamic Republic. Fraud in Vote Counting Supporters of participation in the elections say that in this period, due to the gap between the government and the state, or more accurately, the Guardian Council and the Ministry of Interior, the possibility of fraud is low. This statement does not accurately reflect the reality given the composition of the managers of the Ministry of Interior. According to Mousavi Lari, the Minister of Interior in Khatami's government, "while the current government is on the verge of its third year in power, more than 70% of the managers from Ahmadinejad's government remain in decision-making positions." (Tabnak, October 1, 2015) This may have been true in Khatami's government, but it is not true in Rouhani's government. In this article, the author's goal is neither to encourage participation in the elections (for reasons other than the four reasons mentioned above) nor to boycott them. Individuals can decide for themselves in this regard and do not need a political authority. The goal is to critique the arguments presented to encourage individuals to participate in the elections.