Can Ahmadinejad Regain His Legitimacy?

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DM
by DM
18-Sep-2009
 

So now that several months have passed since the rigged election, Ahmadinejad is reportedly looking for ways to regain his legitimacy in the eyes of the Iranian people.

No, really, he is. Stop laughing!

More oil refineries, he says, so that by 2012 Iran won’t have to import gasoline! More competent technocrats and fewer clerics will advise him! Full speed ahead on civilian nuclear power!

I imagine he’s thinking—well, the Chinese manage to balance economic development with political oppression pretty well. Why can’t Iran?

The answer to that is actually pretty simple—because China isn’t controlled by a bunch of paramilitary thugs who take every opportunity to pad their own pockets and leech productivity from the system at the expense of the general population. I’m referring, of course, of the Revolutionary Guard.

The Guard runs airports and banks and shopping centers and insurance companies and oil companies and civil engineering firms and…you know what I'm talking about. The problem is, they don’t run these things well. In a normal country, if a business is mismanaged and losing money, it fails. In Iran, if it’s run by the Revolutionary Guard, it survives on subsidies from the government. Or, put another way, it survives by stealing money from the people of Iran. The Guard also steals through their connections to the Bonyads, the enormous unregulated tax-exempt charitable foundations that act as business conglomerates and account for an estimated twenty percent of the Iranian economy. 

In order for Ahmadinejad, and by extension Khamenei, to regain any sense of legitimacy the way the Chinese government arguably has, the Iranian government would need to start investing more in the their people than they do in the Revolutionary Guard.

And that’s not going to happen. The Revolutionary Guard didn’t steal the election just to watch their big crime syndicate get shut down. They stole it so they could continue to loot Iran.

So Ahmadinejad can talk all he wants about economic and scientific development. As long the Revolutionary Guard continues to loot the country at the expense of the people and the broader economy, no government run by him or Khamenei or anyone else in Iran will be perceived as legitimate.

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ML51

Iran and the US

by ML51 on

What is the next step for US-Iran relations? The deterioration, or perceived deterioration, is alarming.


Rahim

Ahmadinejad's talk about

by Rahim on

Ahmadinejad's talk about scientific development is just talk I think. Many countries have nuclear power for many years and Iran is still trying. They brag all the time about scientific development but don't support scientists. What new technology has been made in Iran?


DM

Thanks for your comment

by DM on

Thanks for your comment ML51. I’d agree that Ahmadinejad has no real interest in legitimacy for its own sake, if we’re defining legitimacy as consent of a majority of the governed. His push for popular support, even after it has become evident that he’s simply the puppet of a tyrant, is just an attempt to deflate the opposition a bit. I'm less comfortable, however, with your idea that any show by a tyrant in “legitimacy” is merely lip service. I would say history is chock full of examples--Mohammad Reza Shah being one--to the contrary.


ML51

I'm-a-dinner-jacket

by ML51 on

In my perhaps simplistic understanding of tyrants in history, any show by a leader of interest in "legitimacy" is merely lip service. No tyrant is interested in legitimacy for its own sake; lack of respect for the whole concept is implicit in the idea of tyranny. The question becomes, how bad does it have to get before an opposition movement becomes desperate enough to take radical action?


DM

You make a fair point

by DM on

You make a fair point regarding legitimacy, Kaveh. I actually never viewed Ahmadinejad as legitimate either, given the limited number of candidates the Guardian Council approved to run against him in 2005. (Not to mention the ballot stuffing that took place in that election.) But legitimacy is a subjective thing, and I think prior to the election a majority of Iranians did view Ahmadinejad as legitimate. Surveys conducted by reputable pollsters operating outside of Iran tend to confirm this view:

//www.worldpublicopinion.o/pipa/articles/brmi...

 

 


default

assumption!!

by Kaveh Parsa on

The question assumes that he ever had any legitimacy in the first place. which he never did. but thats another topic.

simple answer is NO, and your reaoning is as good as any.

KP