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Monday
April 30, 2001

Selection not election

Regarding Dr. Hamid Zangeneh's enlightening piece ["Uncivil society"], while I value his thought process & his reverence for the nomenclature of "vote" and "election", I get the perception (wrongfully so - I hope) that he equates the June 8th "selection" with the democratic process of "election".

That eye-opening "s" might have been inadvertently or intentionally omitted in his analysis of the events, which will take place in a few weeks on 18th of Khordad.

I am certainly not an economist, nor do I claim to be an expert in the field of politics (finally an Iranian without a prefix), however (and again I might be wrong on this), the conditions and universally accepted principles necessary to use the term "election" in Iran are not present.

The students - the forerunners of the Iranian intellectual movement - are jailed & more than 40 newspapers and publications are shut down. If this were the case in a municipal "election" in Chester Pennsylvania, Dr. Zangeneh would be the only proponent of voting under such dire, despotic atmosphere. (At least I hope so!)

While I do respect the views of those economic professors (in Widener University or elsewhere) who might think otherwise, I cordially ask them to point out an example (in our solar system), wherein a constitutionally embedded mechanism, which regards the populace as "incompetent" in need of a "guardian", FILTERS - SELECTS and then DICTATES the candidates whom the public could put in the office.

The presumption that those who choose not to vote are seeking "another" bloody revolution, in my humble opinion, is trivializing the insight of those who have always sought a peaceful, non-violent path to liberty. I am certain that the Wolfgram Memorial Library in Widener has ample material to support this argument - If not, I gamble to presume that Dr. Zangeneh has at one point or another heard the name Mahatma Gandhi and/or the success of his passive resistant.

Ironically the Nazi regime could and in fact did hold "elections" in certain occupied territories. Amazingly enough the filtering mechanism they shamefully resorted to was not unlike the one "legally" bestowed upon the "Guardian Council". That process is hardly viewed as democratic and those who refrained to fall for that demagoguery are hardly referred to as advocating or "teaching intolerance".

Dr. Zanganeh, because of his noble profession, is among the privileged few who are graced with guiding and enlightening the bright and astute minds of women and men of tomorrow. I hope he can pose the following scenario to his student:

"Those of you who would use the term 'election' for the modus operandi of system which deems ALL of you as 'incompetent' (in need of a 'guardian') - a system which uses a filtering mechanism, dictating a handful of candidates out of several thousand for you to choose from, raise your hands!"

I wonder if anyone other than the seemingly well intentioned professor would raise a limb other than the middle finger!

Mehrangiz A.

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