Too Late: Iran’s Electoral Fraud

Tomorrow, the clerics of Iran will demonstrate the difference between voting and democracy – or even consensual government. As some Iranians go to the polls and others boycott, the American government should decline to validate the sham.

Tomorrow, the clerics of Iran will demonstrate the difference between voting and democracy – or even consensual government. As some Iranians go to the polls and others boycott, the American government should decline to validate the sham.

There once was American government machinery to support Soviet dissidents and refuseniks. At each opportunity, official Americans of both parties would talk about “prisoners of conscience” and demand free emigration. There was a broadcasting system to tell people “behind the Iron Curtain” the truth about their own governments and the truth about ours to give them moral and political support. We didn’t pretend communist referenda were real elections; didn’t pretend it was the best you could get.

In the same years, no matter which party controlled the White House or Congress, official America behaved as if Hosni Mubarak was actually a president, or that 99.8% of the people really liked whichever Assad was on the ballot. “The soft bigotry of low expectations” made us believe it was the best you could get in the Moslem world.

That is demonstrably no longer true. The Iraqi and Lebanese elections provided real choices. True, citizens voted largely along confessional or tribal lines, leaving questions about their view of a national identity or national political interest. Few institutions exist yet in the Moslem world extending beyond the tribe with the exception of some religious parties and pan-Arab nationalists. [Which makes the 2003 Jordanian parliamentary election interesting. Voters gave Islamists less than 11% of the vote and neither pan-Arab nor Ba’athist parties reached the threshold to seat anyone.] So in Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan people peacefully, secretly and with a high level of political discourse elected people like themselves to represent their interests at the national level. This is a stage of political maturity that should not go unappreciated.

The Iranian people do not have choices. The candidates on the ballot have been vetted, selected and promoted by the clerical regime. There is no free press, no free assembly, and no free speech. The regime has imprisoned and tortured promoters of democracy and women’s rights. The knock on the door in the middle of the night is more than a threat – it is an ever-present reality.

Our government has no excuse for not providing overt and covert support to the Iranian people. Partisan politics ensured that we have no UN Ambassador to rise in support of Iranians who put their lives on the line for the freedom to engage in partisan politics. It’s too late for the massive broadcast effort that would have told the people the truth a) about their own government and b) about the new freedoms experienced by their neighbors. It’s too late for the Secretary of State to pound on a table and demand the release of imprisoned democrats.

It is not too late for the President and Congress to denounce the coming electoral fraud. It is not too late to show the Iranian people that we have heard their demand for freedom and put the machinery we built for Soviet dissidents to work on their behalf.