(Picture 1: Reformist lawmakers in sit-in protest)
Last January, one of my new year's predictions was that Iranian President Khatami would once again threaten to step down. I was off by about two weeks and a position. This week Mohammad Satarifar, Vice President of Management and Planning Organization, called for the entire government to step down if reformists were not allowed to run in the upcoming Majlis (parliment) election. The Guardian Council has barred more than 2,000 candidates from running, including one-third of the current legislative body, for holding views it deems anti-Islamic or anti-Republic. Reformists, angered by the the disqualification, staged a sit in (Picture 1). Among those prevented from running was Deputy Speaker Mohammad Reza Khatami (Picture 2), President Khatami's younger brother and leader of the Islamic Iran Participation Front, and Zahra Eshraghi, granddaughter of Ayatollah Khomeini and wife of Reza Khatami.
(Picture 2: Reza Khatami praying during sit-in)
This is just one more gasp from the dying Iranian regime. In last year's municiple elections, participation was drastically lower than previous years amid a growing feeling of the uselessness of the voting process. This year's general election promises more of the same (pdf):
The time has now arrived to put an end to this myth and all the charades that the Islamic Republic has conveniently employed to prolong its unnatural life by showing the Islamic dictatorship for what it truly is. Last summer, on July 9 - the day that commemorated the 1999 student uprising - ordinary Iranians had to venture out into the streets in order to register their protest and hatred of a political system that has ruined their prosperity and violated their human rights. This time by staying at home, they can achieve the same result by signalling to the entire world that they will never accept the fate that is being ordained for them by a cruel, greedy and barbarous clique of villains who have lost any claim they might have had to a popular mandate a long time ago.
Maybe next time the Economist decides to say that Iran is "getting nicer" it should stop and wait for a day or two, or maybe just pay more attention to the rise in corporal and capital punishment and violent supression of anti-regime thought within the country's borders. After ignoring the disappearance of many dissidents, like Ahmad Batebi, there can no more blatant and open sign that Iran is not a democracy, but it merely gives the facade of one, enough to try and stall its own demise.