Iran caught up in debate about freedom, modernization

So Iran's mullahs have just conducted the first round of their exercise in non-democracy, the election of a new president.

Their Guardian Council, made up of Islamic hard-liners, largely determines everything. As far as the election is concerned, they determined who should run. They disallowed a thousand contenders. They ruled out all women candidates. When polling day came around, critics say, the regime even felt it necessary to cook the books to ensure that results turned out the way they wanted them to. The regime denies these charges of fraud.

No candidate got the 50 percent of the vote required to elect a new president outright. So later this week, a run-off is scheduled between two candidates who supposedly topped the polls, Ali Akbar Hasemi Rafsanjani, a former president whose two earlier terms were disappointing to those hoping for modest reform in Iran, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the ultra-conservative mayor of Tehran, who came from nowhere to seize second place in the vote count, bemusing the pollsters and pundits. Conservatives are now vigorously promoting the mayor for the run-off.

Another candidate who pollsters had predicted was in second place, pro-reformist Mostafa Moin, was declared to have come in fifth. Confusion over the results was exacerbated by differing early claims about the results between the Guardian Council and the Interior Ministry.

The direst conclusion from this electoral farce is that Iran's hard-liners are intent on consolidating their power. With the Guardian Council in actual control, Iranians can look to neither finalist for the presidency to display either the ability or the will to effect major political change.

But hold on. There were some encouraging flickers from the voters. They may have been cynical about the prospect of change emerging from this election, but they made clear nonetheless that they yearn for it. Christian Science Monitor correspondent Scott Peterson recorded from a former woman parliamentarian, Haqiqat-Jou, one of the most moving quotes to emerge from the campaign: "The election is our chance to express the thunder of freedom." Do they want freedom enough to barricade the streets and march militantly on the repositories of power? Apparently not. Is their first priority economic change, the creation of jobs and generation of wealth? Apparently yes.