Angry Iran: What Rafsanjani Said Today. Stagnant Egypt: Balancing Hunger and Anger
“Shaikh Ali Akbar Hashimi Rafsanjani, Head of the Council of Leadership Experts made several suggestions to solve the current political situation in Iran. He said during a Friday speech that we should not need outsiders to come in and tell us how to resolve our internal issues. He called on all sides to engage in a debate over television and to resort to legal avenues…..He also called on all detainees from the recent (post-election) to be released and to compensate those who suffered damages during these events….
"He also called for more freedom for the press…..Afterwards, there were some clashes between supporters of elected president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and those of losing candidate Mir Hussein Mausavi…..” Iran’s official al-Alam.
Rafsanjani clearly wants to clip some wings in Tehran and Qom, but he does not want to weaken the regime too much. Rafsanjani wants to ‘strengthen’ the system by accommodating Iranian youth whom he sees as restless and could get out of control again in the future if local pressures, socioeconomic and political, are not eased.
The Friday prayer session was attended by candidates Mausavi and Karrubi, as well as former reformist president Mohammed Khatami.
There is no doubt that all leaders in Iran have been brought down to earth a couple of notches. Ahmadinejad is largely wounded and will probably remain muted while concentrating on economic issues. Khamenai has lost much stature for siding with the incumbent president, and it will be impossible for any leader who follows him to regain the past high status of the ‘Leader’. As I said in an earlier posting: the genie is out of the bottle.
It will be interesting to see how this will affect the ‘Arab street’ and how it deals with the various autocratic leaders in the Middle East: so far they have had two strong indications in recent years that leaders are in fact not gods. One was the trial and execution of Saddam, and other is the turmoil in Iran that has brought the clergy a couple of notches down.
The next story below is quite relevant.
“Striking Egyptian workers: we will not challenge Mubarak, we are only fighting for our wages....One fifth of Egypt’s 77 million people live on US $1 per day.....Their demands revolve around low wages and high prices for food, especially bread….While it was not expected that striking workers at al-Mahalla will escalate toward challenging the regime, analysts say that the strike will drive away foreign investors…” The trick is to keep them hungry just to the right degree.
As someone told me some years ago about another people “once their stomachs are full…” He meant that “they will demand other natural things like democracy and freedom…”
The trick is to just keep them filled enough to want some more of the same, but not filled enough to wonder about other things. The trick for a stagnant regime is to strike a delicate balance between hunger and anger.
Cheers
mhg
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