Iran...change in the wind?
Iran...change in the wind?
Iran: The Guardian reported today at least 500 activists, including politicians, journalists and students, have been arrested over the past five days in the growing crackdown aimed at "decapitating" the protest movement against Ahmadi-Nejad's re-election. At least 100 have been arrested in Tabriz, a Mousavi strong-hold. About 200 were arrested at Tehran University over the 13 June weekend, although many were later released. More than 100 were arrested on 15 June after security forces engaged protesters at Shiraz University.
Update on the voter fraud allegations. The Guardian reported today that results from the 12 June presidential election posted today the Ayandeh website indicate that turnouts of over 100 percent were recorded in at least 30 towns; 26 provinces across the country showed participation levels either unheard of in democratic elections or in excess of the number of registered voters; and at least 200 polling stations recorded participation rates of 95 percent or above. Also, former Iranian interior minister, Ali Akbar Mohtashamipour, said yesterday that 70 polling stations returned more completed ballot papers than the number of locally eligible voters.
Comment: The above data are the first details of the potential enormity of the electoral fraud, which pales Mugabe?s stratagems in Zimbabwe. Analysts have suggested that, if there was fraud, the fraud program had to be massive, coordinated and nationwide in order to produce a landslide. They added that it is difficult to maintain security on such a scale, ergo the Ahmadi-Nejad victory probably was legitimate. That was the initial NightWatch assessment?nationwide fraud is difficult to keep secret.
These new data, accepting them at face value, shed new light on this analysis. The Ministry of Interior and the Revolutionary Guards have the nationwide presence to organize and sustain a massive fraud. They also have the motive ? Ahmadi-Nejad is one of their own. There were thousands of polling places. If two thirds of them reported more votes than living voters, a landslide could be engineered by decentralized fraud.
Most less developed countries rely on the Ministry of Education to supervise elections because schools are the polling places, even in the US. Relatively few countries rely on or trust the national police, i.e., the Interior Ministry. Even Education workers can be suborned, so that is no guarantee of integrity, but it looks better.
The usual tattle tale of voter fraud is a vote count that exceeds the number of living and registered voters and voter registration rolls that include a large number of dead people. This usually is the result of excessive exuberance or enthusiasm by local operatives. For example, Bangladesh, the Philippines and Indonesia at various times in their pasts and many communist states were notorious for this practice. This might be the undoing of the election.
Lengthy Note on Analysis of Instability. The Associated Press reported the following snippets about the demonstrations in Iran.
- ?? It's not just young, liberal rich kids anymore: Whole families, taxi drivers, even conservative women in black chadors are joining Iran's opposition street protests. ?
-??support is growing to include grandmothers, government employees and hotel clerks.?
- "This (the Mousavi opposition) is completely different to 1999. That was between the students and the government. This is between the people and the government. This time it is all of Iran. This is a historic movement.".
- an accountant who declined to be identified said she joined the protests because she wanted her vote to count.
The key question most news services are trying to answer is whether the protests will lead to a change of government leadership or will sputter and die. The answer to that question determines whether a spontaneous uprising can convert into a self-sustaining political movement. It was the same question that analysts asked about the strikes at the Gdansk shipyard in 1980 that morphed into the Solidarnosc movement.
Readers might be on the lookout for the chief indicators of the transition from episodic protests to a self-sustaining, organized opposition capable of bringing down the leadership. All were present in the evolution of Solidarnosc. The event phenomenology is identical, despite the cultural differences.
First, a series of demonstrations mounted by a single occupational, functional or ethnic group almost never transitions into a nationwide movement. These demonstrations are responses to stress and the government usually has reserves of law enforcers and incentives to relieve the stress. Carrots and sticks usually succeed in ending them.
Second is geographic distribution. Protests in capital cities are normal. Power always resides in the capital. Instability is centripetal in that opposition groups that fail to take power or influence the power holders in the capital fail. If opposition starts in the countryside and spreads, it must move to the cities or it will fail. Multiple outbreaks outside the capital are a sign of widespread discontent which is essential for a sustained, effective opposition movement.
Third, political instability always begins on the periphery. The disenfranchised in the center of Tehran, the university students whose ballots were discarded are on the political periphery of power, as are the disenfranchised in Azerbaijan, Sistan Baluchistan and other cities outside Tehran. The government always has a harder time suppressing discontent on the geographic periphery than in the capital. Thus unrest in multiple outlying population centers represents a serious threat that governments usually underestimate.
Fourth and most important, stakeholders in the existing economic system must join the opposition portests. In an earlier era, one would write that those with the most to lose from change of political leaders must join in order to a movement to transition to self sustaining status. In Iran in 1979, when the bazaaris joined the ayatollahs in advocating the overthrow of the Shah, the Shah was overthrown and fled for his life. The clerics alone lacked the clout to effect political change.
Fifth, a group leadership must emerge that can coordinate with other groups in other cities. Groups will send or publish statements of solidarity with each other, building strength through unified action. Those kinds of publicity are the signature that more complex organization, leadership and cohesion are evolving.
The government leaders usually panic and then overreact by using excessive force and in effect bring themselves down, if the government collapses or concedes.
Finally the action will progress through phases of under-reaction, over-reaction and concession and then recycle.
Applying the above to Iran. The first days of the demonstrations looked like sour grapes among the youth and urban dwellers. That encouraged the government to under-react in hopes it would allow the demonstrations to burn themselves out.
When they continued on 13 and 14 June, TV news showed pictures of uniformed men beating unarmed people with sticks. Nevertheless, the crowds forced the uniforms to retreat. This was an over-reaction, serving up beatings as a response to voter fraud claims. Governments do stupid things like this, when an immediate call for investigations or appointment of a respected commission might have pulled the rug out from under the protestors.
In the past two days the composition of the demonstrators has diversified. That is the significance of the bullets above. They show that average, everyday folk have begun to register their concerns about dishonesty. Loss of support among this demographic cohort is perilous for an administration.
The most significant new information is that professional people have joined blue-collar working people. If businesses start to close and small business owners join the protests, especially outside Tehran, the administration must fall.
The government already made one set of concessions when it approved the Guardian Council order to recount votes. That concession was not enough, signified by the continuation of the protests. Thus, the crisis management cycle is now reset. The government is now assessing whether its actions to date will placate the crowds. The demonstrations have spread. New cohorts have joined, which include stakeholders in the economy ? more important than the political leaders actually.
The next step for the opposition will be characterized by greater organization and communication outside individual cities. Without leadership that can coordinate the timing and location of protests, the movement will not succeed. It is not clear that Mousavi?s political organization is yet willing to take the risks of failure associated with that leadership role.
The authority and geographic dispersion of political/religious leaders calling for the votes to be counted against the rolls hints that some kind of leadership structure is forming. There are few public signs of a national organization forming, but it is early yet. If protests persist, that will emerge.
The next step for the government will be an attempt at a wider and harsher crackdown, almost certainly. Khamenei might try to finesse the unrest by skipping the next over-reaction step, though the Revolutionary Guards will oppose a finesse move without more head cracking. The finesse move would be aimed at dispersing demonstrations by agreeing to allow ballot boxes to be compared against voter registration rolls, a major concession and gamble. If this occurs, Khamenei would show he is willing to sacrifice Ahmadi-Nejad for the sake of the theocracy, assuming the Guardian reports are accurate.
Such a concession is more likely now that the protests are diversifying. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei is most likely getting worried that a systemic change is threatened on his watch. Those worries will make a leader prone to try to settle things as quickly as he can and prone to make colossal blunders.
The theocracy itself is not challenged, only the honesty of the processes it set up. Its feet are being held to the fire, as it were. If the protests continue, which now seems likely for the first time based on the evidence, the theocracy will undergo significant change by becoming accountable to the electorate in an unprecedented fashion for Iran, at least for a short while. That is tentatively and potentially tonight?s good news.
