Omid Memarian

Tuesday, February 24, 2004

Why didn’t they attend? Why did they attend?

Fashionably-dressed Iranian girls walk in a Tehran mall. Iran's turbulent experiment with reforms was set to be halted, with conservatives and hardliners winning controversial parliamentary elections that most of their reformist rivals were barred from contesting(AFP/Patrick Baz)

A few minutes ago I had e interview with France Radaio (Persian Section). “Why many of Iranian youth didn’t attend in the election?” They asked. And also some question about young people who attended.
Here is a summary of this interview:
1-There are many factors that have effect of attendance in election. The participation of People who were involve in political issues during these days like as journalists, students, and cultural middle class in all ,was very low. They knew what is happening by make the election into two phases.
2-But there are many young people who believe that the political battles during these years had no effect of their life. Some of them say that politician can not change anything. Because they do everything they want. So their votes will be unworthy. It means that reformists had not a social project for youth during these years. A project who we can talk about the beginning and the end. Project who many of youth agreed on it. There was no social project. And so many of youth can not see any mentionable action especially in middle class and poor class.
3-A part of youth believes that the election is a show for Islamic regime to bring people to vote. This pessimistic part is not huge but you can find some of them in Tehran or the other cities… (Continued…)
4-As you heard the number of participant in election in large cities like Tehran and Shiraz and even Kermanshah was between 28 and 33. Most of them were conservatives that believe that participating in election is their religious duty. In the religious and conservatives and whom that earning a living by Islamic regime part, when they ordered them to participate or do anything, their faithful members come and vote. Although many of them are not informed about the reason who are mentioned by reformists of even conservatives group.
5-We have to mention another important part. People that have silent votes and who are not sensitive about the political events and vote occasional. Conservatives with multilateral mechanism such as state TV and radio and religious institution and even municipality gathered their votes. A few days before election municipality informed that they give 1000$ loan to every young man and woman who decided to marry. Is this really the duty of municipality?
6- I think we can talk more about the contribution of voters later. But this common categorizing can be mentioned with little error in large cities.

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