says Deputy Interior Minister Solat Mortazavi.
“The democracy in developed countries is a kind of a partisan dictatorship and we do not approve of [such] a democracy,” the state news agency quoted Mortazavi as saying Monday.
He said most governments in the world are unitary, unlike Iran, which has three branches—Executive, Legislative, Judicial—and a Just Jurisprudent chosen by the people at the top. He neglected to mention that the system of three independent branches was created in 1787 by the authors of the US Constitution and adopted by Iran almost two centuries later.
Mortazavi said that no country has had a lawful democracy, aside from Iran.
“Iran has the largest number of political parties. We have 250 parties in the country that are allowed to [be politically] active,” he said. Mortazavi appeared to be treating the number of political parties as a rating scale for democracy. Actually, most of the so-called parties are more like associations. Some, for example, are organizations of alumni from a particular university. Few of what he calls parties ever run candidates.
As a practical matter, in the cities the public generally pays attention to only two or three groups that name a slate of candidates. Rarely is anyone not on one of the big slates ever elected.
More importantly, a political party cannot operate in Iran unless it is licensed by the government, which doesn’t license critical groups. In real democracies, people decide if they wish to organize a party and voters decide whether a party goes anywhere.
Regime officials like to say that the United States is not a true democracy because it only allows two parties to operate. In reality, six parties ran candidates for president in the majority of states in 2008. But, more importantly, the candidates were chosen in primaries where the public gets to vote and chose, while in Iran the power structure chooses who will get listed on the ballot or a group’s slate. The public has no input.
“Within the framework of the law, everyone is allowed to undertake political activity and for my own part, as the head of the country’s Elections Headquarters, I would like to invite all to participate in the elections,” he said.
Mortazavi stressed that nothing can change the will of the nation in Iran and no power can change the fate of the elections, likening the elections to a “transparent box” that can be monitored by all. He did not mention that the Islamic Republic never publishes election returns by polling place, as democracies do, so the public cannot check whether the published results tally with the local ballot count. The smallest aggregation of votes published in Iran is at the level of the shahrestan or county, of which there are 300. Each of those published figures combines the votes of an average of 150 polling places. Only at the individual polling place can the public see the ballots being counted—and sometimes even that has been barred.
The Majlis elections have been set for next March. Potential candidates must register for the elections from December 24 to 30. The Council of Guardians will decide which ones actually get on the ballot.