As long as we are speaking of elections……
While the country, the US, was laser focused on the primaries and the media speculating who and what would happen afterwards and onward……Iran had an election and it could be good news for the rest of the world….
It looks like the moderates are winning big time….that could seriously limit the influence of the hardliners…..
Though all the details are still emerging, the results of the Iranian parliamentary election were released by the Interior Ministry today, and showed a strong shift in composition toward the reformist wing, giving the supporters of President Hassan Rouhani a plurality
The split sees 85 reformist MPs, and 73 members of the moderate conservative camp, meaning the two factions combine for a majority, even without further possible gains in some districts during runoff votes. These factions both supported the nuclear deal, and are broadly supportive of international rapprochement.
The big losers are the ultraconservatives, the hardliners, who had over 100 seats in the parliament last time, but are down to just 68. Turnout was 62 percent nationwide, according to the Interior Ministry.
The election also saw voting for the Assembly of Experts, a body which is responsible for selecting the next Supreme Leader. Though the experts aren’t split up by political alliance, they too appeared to be heavily moderates and reformists.
Another positive note for the Iranian election was that more women than ever have won……
Estimates based on the latest results show that as many as 20 women are likely to enter the 290-seat legislature known as the Majlis, the most ever. The previous record was set nearly 20 years ago during the fifth parliament after the 1979 revolution, when 14 women held seats. There are nine women in the current Iranian parliament.
Eight of the women elected this time were on a reformist-backed list of 30 candidates standing in the Tehran constituency known as “the list of hope”.
(the guardian.com)
Now with this election what will the scenarios for the region look like? Could this be a positive sign? Or will it be just more of the same rhetoric?
I found a piece written by a very good Iranian-American journalist, Hooman Majd……..
Iranians want a lot of things. What they don’t want is to be told that their vote doesn’t count or that it doesn’t matter.
Source: How much change do Iranians really want? – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East
Personally, I think this is a positive thing…..that the Iranians would move closer to the rest of the world and work with it in solving problems……it is too early to say for sure….but it does look like a promising change, at least to me……
The hardliners have been beaten by the reformists and the moderates…..that could be a positive thing for international relations…..but what if anything does this defeat mean……
Two important nationwide elections were held in Iran on Feb. 26. One was for the Majlis, or parliament, while the second was for the Assembly of Experts, a constitutional body that appoints the supreme leader and can, at least theoretically, fire him. To be sure, the elections were neither democratic nor fair. Thousands of candidates were disqualified from running by the Guardian Council, another constitutional body that vets all candidates for elections. The elections are also not fair because the hard-liners, who control many important national organs, use the nation’s resources for their own campaign and propaganda.
Source: What the Defeat of Iran’s Hard-Liners Means
This will be an interesting situation to observe……well at least for me…..
What we are going to see if the hardliners in Iran are defeated by the moderates is a new era of moderately hardline leadership and that will soon be brought down by a hardline revolution the likes of which we have never seen. Good news is that if the Iranians start an internal fight for political survival they will be less of a threat to the rest of the world until they get tired of bombing themselves … ala Syria. I think ISIS is watching Iran with a ravenous boner on waiting for the first sign of weakness so they can pounce.
That would be disastrous for them….we may see a slacking of the hardline issues on the people….more social freedom….
Not for long I can guarantee you that because the concept of social freedom is not in their DNA nor in their ideology.
Neither party gives a crap about society….it is about them getting to play GOD
The only way they are ever going to get any social freedom is for them to completely abandon the idea of having a state dominated by religion and turn more to some that better resembles democracy. That is not going to happen short of a blood soaked revolution!
Maybe we should take that advice….since one main qualification for running to office is your religion….this country spends time and resources forcing religion on the society….
A few observations….
Hope is where you find it.
Democracy is NOT a religion, nor does it replace any, yet, so many seem to think it is a solution to such issues…. The problems we face are not a result of philosophy, of any sort. They are a direct result of ignorance of our own nature, and our insistence on believing more strongly in our own importance than we do in reality…
Governments, all of them, operate under the mistaken assumption people NEED to be governed… which makes them all delusional…
Religion makes the same wrong assessment of reality, assuming we humans have some importance to the universe greater than it actually is….
Lest we neglect the third concept upon which many of our issuea are rooted, Money has become yet another delusion, to wit: virtually everyone alive mistakenly believes it exists outside our minds…. Regardless of how much importance people seem to place on it, it really is nothing more than an agreed-upon method for organizing our time and energy, by placing a value on it, a value that, in reality, does not exist, and has no real influence over anything but our own attitudes….
The world is in flames because we are nothing more than a large infestation of naked apes with more talent than sense, who are rapidly becoming a new species, Homo Suicidus….
Sorry, something about all the above stimmed my rant button…. Unless humanity learns to understand our own nature, and to alter the course we are on, we are, quite simply, doomed, and have done it to ourselves, out of ignorance of that nature….
And, no election is going to fix anything….
gigoid, the dubious
Damn typos…. ‘issues’ not ‘issuea’…
Told you to blame the keyboard…..works for me…LOL c
I think in Iran it will help the society a little….it may open up more to the rest of the world….chuq