Iranians hold their noses as they pick new president

[democratic]

Simon Tisdall
Friday May 13, 2005
The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1482967,00.html

Iranians may have to hold their noses when they go to the polls in next month's presidential election. This is only partly the result of a new craze for surgical nose jobs among Tehran's fashionable youth.

Like the British electorate, Iran's 46 million voters are a bit sniffy about the candidates on offer. The favourite, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, 70, conveys a distinct whiff of mothballs. A loyalist of Iran's revolutionary leader, the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, he has been president twice before, from 1989 to 1997.

The touchstone issues are Iran's controversial nuclear programmes, its under-performing centralised economy, and pent-up social discontent. Any one, if mishandled, could trigger a new national convulsion.

Yet unveiling his election manifesto this week, Mr Rafsanjani adopted a more positive tone towards Iranians, half of whom were born after the 1979 revolution, who yearn for normal relations with Europe and the US and a more open, civil society.

His shop-worn brand of ambiguous pragmatism also has scant appeal for impatient younger generations, said Mohsen Sazegara, a former Khomeini official turned government critic. Iran had "undergone a profound post- revolution social transformation" not matched by its political institutions, he said in an online debate hosted by openDemocracy.co.uk.

"There is huge dissatisfaction with the way the country is governed. The overwhelm ing majority of young Iranians are against the regime. This situation is really dangerous." Radical reform, starting with a new constitution, was essential, Mr Sazegara said.

[lenidog]

1. Maybe the Iranians will get the revolution they really wanted sans

the theocratic dictatorship.

[Selatius]

2. "God willing"