Battle of the Numbers
Dec 3rd, 2009 by pedestrian
These days, (one of the) wars is over numbers.
One way the opposition is trying to gauge the numbers on the Ahmadinejad camp, is through approximating the number of visitors his provincial appearances get and comparing it to previous years and the presidential campaign rallies. Of course, that’s not a good estimate for “supporters” given the number of government employees and schools that are forced/asked to attend the gatherings, but still, it is the best approximation we can get.
Kalemeh has posted this letter from a high school in Esfahan, asking parents to sign the form so that students could be taken to “welcome the respected president Dr. Ahmadinejad” yesterday, when he was in Esfahan.
Anyone who has gone to school in Iran is familiar with these letters.
Although we personally never received one to greet the president during the Khatami years. It was always the leader and other (unelected) officials.
Kalemeh also compares the participants in yesterday’s rally with that of Khatami’s visit before the presidential election, when he was campaigning for Mousavi in Esfahan in the exact same location Ahamdinejad was yesterday. This is a photo of the Khatami rally in June:
If you are going to say that it is unfair to compare a campaign rally to a provincial visit, I would rush to agree … HOWEVER if you’ve ever lived in Iran or worked or gone to school there, you would know that letters like the one above are very common. The government tries its best to drag as many people as possible to these visits, so the fact that they could not come out with a huge number, and the fact that Ahmadinejad was FOUR hours late and the rally was going to be canceled are all things to think about.
AyandehNews has more photos and a video.
Ped, have you noticed how ticky and twitchy AN has become recently; he seems to be barely containing a psychosis attack! Always angry and nervous!
naj, and did you see Mowjcamp’s report about Ahmadi just showing up at Esfahan University without the staff, faculty or students knowing?
I think that’s such a good sign.
He seemed out of it during that interview the other night. He needs to take a chill pill. naj, could one reason for his worries be that KII didn’t let him cozy up to Obummerz the way he planned? I mean, he’s a loner it seems. Doesn’t belong to either camp and is rapidly losing popularity. Did you have teacher/retired army personnel in your family? They were outraged that the bonuses stopped coming right after the election.
I’m really worried for the economy Naj. And the new sanctions are going to make it worse.
i know.
funny thing, some people in iran want them–i dont trust their intelligence in general, though.
the teachers/army people i my family were are fired when KI was alive, in the first years of revolution; so they could never even collect pension! Althoough I had an uncle who suddenly turned religious in those years; i think he has his pension reduced now!
Dear Pedestrian,
thank you very much for that revealing report, in particular the last photograph. Report and photo give the non-Iranian readers certainly much to brood and speculate on:
For some time regimes/hidden ruling cliques will manage to keep themselves in power via military rule (see Burma today; see former Spain, Portugal, Chile, Argentine). But
a) Iran and its recent history of the last two decades is different, though this way of military rule is being tried at the moment (with which degree of long-term success ???) via increasing influence on the part of IRGC and its basijis,
b) on the long run influential cliques anywhere want someone at the helm of a ship of state as it tosses in the storm of public disrespect who is somehow at least minimally accepted by the public. The seemingly decreasing acceptance of Ahmadinejad and Khamenei on the part of the public will not satisfy for too long a time such hidden influential cliques wielding real power.
[[[Possible figures to show a way out of that dilemma – i.e. to replace Ahmadinejad and/or Kahmenei - might be one of the opportunistic, but not fanatic and not day-dreaming, not-fantasizing Larijanis ?? ]]]
The decreasing acceptance of the two leading [twin-]politicians Ahmadinejad/Khamenei seems somehow connected with a series of events like the following. As I cannot forget this chivalrous, just, noble, upright, young Iranian and accomplished gentleman Dr. Ramin Pourandarjani,
I’d like to mention some topical (???) news (???) on his recent death:
Prosecutors in Iran say they don’t yet know whether the suspicious death of a doctor – Ramin Pourandarjan – was murder or suicide. But in the meantime they claim to know the (third, fourth, fifth, sixth ???) cause: a poisoned salad. As to the present case already a number of competing claims have been expressed by authorities, from a car crash that never happened to suicide in a courthouse. – Dr. Ramin Pourandarjani working at Iran’s Kahrizak detention facility, testified about the abusive treatment of the late Mohsen Rouhalamini (son of the adviser of one of Iran’s conservative candidates, and one of the most high-profile detainees) to a parliamentary committee. That detainee, Mohsen Rouhalamini, was brought to him “in a dreadful state after being subjected to extreme physical torture. He was in a critical state,” Dr. Purandarjani is reported to have told parliamentary deputies. When the detainee died, Pourandarjani reportedly said, “officials at Kahrizak threatened that if I disclosed the causes of the wounds of the injured at Kahrizak, I would not be able to live.”
Source:
http://features.csmonitor.com/globalnews/2009/12/03/in-iran-death-by-poison-salad-and-a-hair-cream-overdose/
All the best
German
report of the British daily “Independent” on Ramin Pourandarjani’s death:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/mystery-surrounds-poisoning-of-doctor-who-exposed-torture-1833159.html