Ominous Signs of Rise of Military Dictatorship in Iran
This would be a second coup by the Ahmadinejad and his military oil mafia (IRGC) to hold on to power indefinitely. Robert Tait reports from Tehran:
Candidates in next year's Iranian parliamentary elections will be banned from displaying posters and banners, raising concerns over whether the poll will be free and fair.
Iran's fundamentalist-dominated parliament has passed a law severely restricting political advertising during campaigning for next March's election, which is expected to test the popularity of the Islamist president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, while measuring the pro-liberal reformist movement's ability to mount an electoral comeback amid increasing crackdowns on dissent.
In poor areas and remote places, nominees communicate with people primarily through pictures and posters," he told the centrist website, Aftab. "Why do the authorities expect people to trust them when they don't trust the people? They are tightening the media and information atmosphere by imposing various restrictions." Campaign photos have often played a key role in Iranian elections. The former reformist president, Mohammad Khatami, used portraits to make his face known before his landslide election triumph in 1997.
The success of Fatemeh Houshmand, a 25-year-old reformist, in topping the poll in last year's Shiraz city council elections was partly credited to campaign posters displaying her striking good looks.
Mr Ahmadinejad's supporters fared poorly in last December's nationwide council elections, prompting some analysts to forecast further reversals in the forthcoming parliamentary poll.There have already been complaints that widespread participation has been discouraged by rules requiring state and government workers to resign their posts eight months before polling day if they wanted to compete.
The council disqualified thousands of reformists from the 2004 parliamentary election, in which conservatives triumphed.
Last November I predicted that Ahamdinejad is positioning himself to oust the mullahs and capture the role of Supreme Leader (see here and here). True, Ahmadinejad and his military Junata (IRGC and Abadgran) had a set back in recent parliamentary election but it seems they have recouped and re-strategized and going for the ultimate kill.
More on IRGC' Connection to oil and gas industries here.
Meanwhile, our State Department thinks that they can make a back door deal with impotent and powerless Rafsanjani and it refuses to list the IRGC as a terrorist organization. *sigh
ABF, for the promotion of human rights and democracy in Iran
3 comments:
You find out who's running, whether or not they are for human rights, womens' rights, end to honor killings, end to stoning, etc, and I will post about it all over the place where the Iranian people read me. (They read me from Iran!) I will keep it on top until the elections in March. See if you get their faces, too, okay? We will try to beat them at their own game. :)
Dear Rosemary: These elections are not real. Those candidates who don't believe in Sharia and stoning and the rest of the rutlessness are automatically disqualified. This is just a show of mass deception.
I am expecting some sort of marginalization of the Mullahs by the IRGC... the Mullahs are not radical *enough* for the IRGC and have unwisely handed the actual power to control the Nation over to the IRGC.
Just one more mis-step by a high ranking theocrat should do it. That will, of course, touch off more than even the IRGC can handle if the iron fist relaxes even just a teensy bit. And for all of their capability in terrorizing, they don't seem to have that concept down too well, of handling a few problems at a time. My guess is that they can promise cheap gas to get by for a few weeks, but that will only make everything so much worse... the crumbling has started, which is why the saber-rattling towards Bahrain and the UAE. They have no charismatic leader, however, and that will not unite the Nation. Never does when things are going down the tubes.
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