and the funny thing, it's such a crucial part of the story! Moaveni had this great passage on the malaise that surrounded voting in 2001, as well as in 2005. No one felt like the candidates were any different, dumb and dumber, tweedle dee and tweedle dum. I laughed the first time I read that.
And for Moaveni, it was really troubling in 2001, because the last elections, student activists would delineate the fine differences and debate them constantly. People were so disgusted with what the reformist failed to accomplish anything. They were disgusted by the fact that, no matter what they did, another arm of the government controlled by the "politicized" clerics or some oppositional force to whatever arm of the clique held power that month, would see to it that their policies were obstructed. (see the Michael Pollak link to an article on Juan Cole for the backdrop).
They did this by by officially making sure that progressive legislation around the status of women didn't pass, by obstructing it, by making people's lives miserable with the use of the Basij. Police might say one thing, but they'd unleash the Basij to make sure people were not taking advantage of the cultural and social lifting of restrictions.
She writes about the run up to the election. What they did was ramp up a form of political alienation akin to the effect that attack ads have on people here. They ramped up repression by cracking down on people found with alcohol, couples caught holding hands, listening to banned music, etc. They'd publicly whip people for their violations. You'd go to a public square to find 30 men, face down on the ground, hands tied behind their backs. One by one, they'd be forced to strip their shirts off. They'd hang them from trees by their tied hands and lash them, from 1 - 17 times, and force them to repent.
these weren't scenes of celebration and spectacle, either. Old women stood weeping in crowds, trying to get them to stop, pleading and imploring.
And all of it was happening against the backdrop of the weekly closing of opposition newspapers. She noted that, in her family, people began as keenly interested in the election. They'd bring home a dozen newspaper a day, just to get a sense of who was saying what and which clerical clique wanted this or that change or stay the same. by the end, they only bought one newspaper. The rest had been shut down.
That is all, in part, why the reformists got such a bad reputation.
but there's another side to this, but can't write about it right now. will later.
-- http://cleandraws.com Wear Clean Draws ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)