Iran's Elections - Is There Any Hope?
Looks like the recent elections in Iran are favoring the moderates in the early returns and hard line supporters of President Ahmadinejad seem, at first blush, to be taking a beating, at least in the cities. This could be good news, if not for the rumors that the hard liners are now trying to tamper with votes in Tehran so their party will not look like it did as bad as it did. So don't get your hopes up too high because until the last vote is counted, anything can happen as Americans saw in 2000 in Florida which put Bush in office against the will of the majority of Americans and as they saw again in 2004, where Bush was re-elected by a razor thin margin again thanks to vote and voter tampering in Ohio. So if elections can be rigged in the country that proclaims its self the model of democracy just imagine what can happen in a county like Iran which uses democracy as a sham to give it global legitimacy. So I guess my message here is, looks like the average Iranian might actually be quite a reasonable person, but with a government that stinks (kind of like what I think of Americans and their government). If that is the case, then the silent Iranian majority needs to speak more loudly before Iran eschews all semblance of being a representative government. There is not much time to act.
