Two days ago, Iranians went to the poll desks and participated in the ninth parliament elections. The first national elections after the 2009 presidential election which resulted in crisis.
The state media has declared that 62.4% of people have given their votes throughout the country.
I was in Iran two weeks before the elections. Tehran's streets and walls were filled with different ads and posters, 'asking' people to give their votes in a sign of 'unity'. However, wherever I looked, I saw unhappy citizens who are struggling to live under harsh economical conditions.
In a long conversations that I had with different people, from a taxi driver to an university professor, one thing was certain; everyone predicted that citizens participation in the election would be huge. "People don't even care what is happening. Look at the Gas situation for example; the rate could go on to 10 dollars per gallon and people would still be clueless," said Mahmoud, a taxi driver who was driving me around the town.
On March 2nd, Hooman Majd wrote an article in the opinion page of The New York Times about the current situation in Iran. He talks about how the sanctions that have been imposed on Iranian people over the past year wouldn't have any positive effect, as the West wants, on their desire to stand up to the Islamic regime.
Mr. Majd anticipates that Iranians have to be ensured about their future rather than being hungry and scared to eventually use their voice against their government. "The ever more stringent sanctions imposed on Iran may be “biting,” but they are also stifling voices for change — voices that simply cannot be heard at a time when the population is threatened with an economic chokehold or, worse, with being bombed," Mr. Majd says.
There is no doubt that a significant fact lays in Mr. Majd's words; and that fact is that frightened people will have very little desire to go on the streets and demand what they want from their government. The same government that managed to suffocate the voice of thousands of people who came to the streets after the 2009 presidential elections. In some way, Iranians are still paying the price for what had happened on those days. Activists and journalists are still being imprisoned; students are being expelled from universities. Could we really blame people in being scared with this overview? With a bad economy that is making the poor even more poor what do people have to arm themselves with against the Islamic regime? Can hunger and uncertainty work as a weapon?
