Growing Limitations on Qualified Candidates

 Official photograph of Iran President Rouhani (left)

                with President-Elect Raisi

The notion of “free and fair elections” is eroding fast in so many parts of the world. In Russia, for example, Vladimir Putin’s administration at first tried to poison the only viable opposition candidate, Alexey Navalny, and then when he had recovered in a hospital in Germany, he was instantly jailed upon his return to Moscow. People’s Republic of China’s President, Xi Jinping, defying the hand-over treaty with the UK guaranteeing a continuation of the British legal system until 2047, removed candidates from running for Hong Kong elected positions who did not fully support Beijing’s repressive laws against free speech. 

Examples of pretend democracy, where candidates who do not tow the party line are simply disqualified, are everywhere. The latest example is the late June presidential election in Iran, reflecting the leadership that President Biden has to deal with if there is any hope of a negotiated re-containment of Iran’s renewed refining of weapons-grade fissionable nuclear materials.

“Iran's hard-line judiciary chief won the country's presidential election in a landslide victory Saturday, propelling the supreme leader's protege into Tehran's highest civilian position in a vote that appeared to see the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic's history.

“Initial results showed Ebrahim Raisi won 17.8 million votes in the contest, dwarfing those of the race's sole moderate candidate. However, Raisi dominated the election only after a panel under the watch of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei disqualified his strongest competition.

“His candidacy, and the sense the election served more as a coronation for him, sparked widespread apathy among eligible voters in the Islamic Republic, which has held up turnout as a sign of support for the theocracy since its 1979 Islamic Revolution. Some, including former hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, called for a boycott.” CBSNews.com, June 19th. Writing for the June 19th Informed Comment, Juan Cole provides more details on this Islamist clone president-elect:

“[Ebrahim Raisi] was born in 1960 into a family of clerics claiming descent from the Prophet Muhammad in the Nowghan district of Mashhad, the largest city in Iran’s northeast at a population of 3 million (i.e., Chicago inside city limits). He studied in seminary in Mashhad, known as a bastion of religious conservatism and the site of the shrine to the eighth Imam or successor of the Prophet Muhammad in Shiism, Imam Reza…

“At age 15 in 1975, he went to another holy city, Qom, for higher seminary studies. This was a time of popular ferment against the iron rule of the then king or shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlevi, whose policies had an anti-clerical and secular streak that angered Iran’s Shiite clergymen. In Qom… he also studied toward an MA in International Law and did all but dissertation work in Islamic Law after the Revolution at Shahid Motahhari University. He doesn’t seem ever to have actually been awarded any degrees.”

“[Beginning in 1980, Raisi pursued a career as a public prosecutor in Karaj, then Tehran.] In 1988 there was a massacre in jail of some 5,000 People’s Jihadis, and Raisi was implicated in it. (The official Iranian account did not mention this role for him, as a result of which he has been sanctioned by the US and others, so that he cannot travel internationally.)… In 1988, as well, Ayatollah Rohullah Khomeini appointed him to deal with judicial issues in Laristan, Kermanshah and Simnan… He ran for president in 2017 against Hassan Rouhani, but Rouhani had just achieved the 2015 nuclear deal with the UN Security Council, and had the advantages of incumbency, and Raisi did poorly.

“[After a series of rising appointments, D]uring the past two years Raisi has been Iran’s chief justice. He often imposed for the death penalty, and even executed one man for drinking alcohol. He is a notorious hanging judge with no respect for individual liberties.

“It was after Trump destroyed the nuclear deal in 2018 and imposed a wide-ranging economic blockade on Iran that the economy tanked, and Rouhani looked like a chump for trusting the United States, so that the centrists plummeted in popularity. Hence, Raisi will likely win a big majority in this round, though it isn’t that he is popular. It is just that the Guardian Council refused to allow centrists and pragmatists to run, so that Raisi [had] little competition, and the centrists and left-liberals in the Iranian electorate say they [didn’t] bother to vote.” Hard-liners rule Iran. Culling candidates who do not accept fiercely limited conservative need not apply; it’s voter suppression on steroids.

For our skeptical wagging heads, we know this is wrong. But so many Americans and elected officials see nothing wrong with new laws making minority access to the ballot box more difficult than at any time since Jim Crow laws were purportedly removed. They obviously weren’t. The example is further illustrated in the dramatic culling of non-Trump-supporting candidates – a party with a very minimalistic “whatever Trump wants” platform – from their ranks. We seem to be slowly but clearly moving towards a rather undemocratic form of government.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as we see an increasing number of Americans willfully embracing a white, traditional Christian autocracy as their favored choice of government, can the United States survive as a nation?