Marina Forti 17 May 2017
The crowd is chanting slogans to the rhythm of pop songs, young people wearing purple and green bandanas are waving placards while famous artists take turns at the microphone appealing for votes.
iran
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- 7 March 2016Unlike what many may think, elections in an illiberal country like Iran are not only a political show. Their outcome serves as a test of strength among Iran’s competing power centers. Over the weekend, the Iranian people went massively to the polls to elect members of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, the parliament, and the 88 members of the Assembly of Experts, which is in charge of selecting the next supreme leader to replace Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. This was the first time that the two political bodies were elected simultaneously.
- 24 February 2016In Iran the time has come to call voters to the polls. “Even an influential minority will make the difference in the next parliament,” said reformist candidate Mohammad-Reza Aref only a few days ago addressing a crowded assembly of young supporters of the National Determination Party (as reported by the Financial Times’ correspondent). Similar appeals have been made by President Hassan Rouhani.
- 27 May 2015Tehran – One front page headline reads “Delegation of U.S. oil companies to visit Tehran.” Others instead announced that “Trade delegations follow one another.” There have even been headlines stating “Crowds of foreign investors prepare to invade Iran,” with English-language Iranian newspapers not holding back in their use of superlatives and one column saying that Iran is the “last frontier” for international investors. Expectations are high, extremely high.
- 5 November 2014Emma Bonino, Italy’s former minister of foreign affairs, has returned from Iran, where, with a group of European and Arab experts on Middle Eastern affairs organised by the European Council on Foreign Relations, she attended a two and a half hour long briefing with Foreign Minister Zarif. However, returning from the country from which, as Italy’s Foreign Minister, she was the first to sense a strong signal of political change when the reformists won, Emma Bonino has brought a warning: “Should negotiations on nuclear issues fail, the only real chance of beginning a stabilisation process for the entire region would be lost.”
- 14 June 2013After the final frantic hours of election campaigning, Tehran and the rest of the country now await voting results. Since 8 a.m. over 50 million people have been called upon to choose between six candidates, Said Jalili, Baqer Qalibaf, Ali Akbar Velayati, Hassan Rouhani, Mohsen Rezaei and Mohammad Gharazi. Of these, according to Interior Ministry data published on Sunday, 1.5 million will be voting for the very first time, meaning they turned eighteen after June 2009. There are 60,000 polling station and in Tehran, which has 14 million inhabitants in its constituency, there are 6,000 polling stations set up in mosques, schools, banks and even mobile ones with 12,000 booths.
- 12 February 2013Iran, 14 June’s next Presidential elections are upon us. And, in Tehran there is a confrontation between conservatives close to the Supreme Leader and hardliners backed by the outgoing President-in-office, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The space is too small for other fronts. Iranian reformists remain excluded from political life with two of their leaders, Moussavi and Karroubi, key players of the anti-regime protests in 2009, still blocked under house arrest. Yet, this time above all tensions could be caused by the severe monetary crisis that is hitting the country and causing an increase in prices without precedent. However, on the eve of the elections Iranian authorities are still counting on anti-American propaganda and repressive actions against the reformist press.
- 5 March 2012Elections in Iran have always had a contradictory meaning. On one hand, they have always been less than free and fair, even when the polls were basically correct, (meaning not materially rigged), because of the vetting of candidates by the Guardian Council. On the other, they have been a flexible mechanism measuring the relative strength of the different components of the regime. Not a democracy, certainly, but a sort of pluralistic oligarchy.
- 10 December 2011By Nicola Missaglia Seyyed Mohammad Khatami, famous for having been the fifth president of the Islamic Republic of Iran between 1997 and 2005, is an Iranian Shiite intellectual, philosopher and theologian who belongs, without doubt, to the varied world of Islamic reformism.
- 19 September 2011One is immediately captured by an incredible rhythm, a narration that is apparently broken but is on the contrary coherent and fully unitary. It is almost a script ready for a movie. What came to my mind was Altman’s “Short cuts”, which is not surprising, since Mastur is the Farsi translator of Raymond Carver, the author of the literary work from which that movie was drawn.
