My “home” country, Iran, is getting ready for a presidential election in 9 days. The election is unique in some ways because it’s not party-based, instead there are multiple candidates competing with each other. Technically anybody can register to become president, and this leads to an interesting “candidate registration” event each time… different people from all over the country rally to sign up (over 400 signed up this year), and you hear the most amusing (and sometimes the strangest) proposals from the people that have are never heard otherwise about tackling the issues in their why-vote-for-me speeches :) Then, of course, a “guardian council” eliminates the ones that they think are not “qualified” for presidency. Many criticize this selection process as a way to keep the power “contained” to a particular group, which is, I think, true (it is also true that the boundaries are vague in the law, allowing them to act on their own conviction). Anyways, now we’re left with 4 candidate for the election: two from right (including our current “beloved” president), and two from slightly left; even though, left and right are not descriptive of their view points in their strict definition (almost all of them propose a socialistic islamic open market, whatever that is!). The atmosphere is hyped up, I think (partly because Iranians are emotional voters, and you never now what the results is, until after they’ve voted), and we see lots of discussions in the less-than-usual-strict condition (in terms of freedom of speech, and even thoughts!) that exists only in the few days close to elections. :)

Whether to vote or not has been an issue for each election (strangely, to me… hence the image above) these days. A large group of people (large enough that can easily change the outcome of each election) don’t participate in the election, since they see their participation as a validation of the system. Some don’t want to be associated with the government in any way because of its not so brilliant record in human and civil rights, many do not find the government a fair representative of their views and feel left out, some still want their king back in power, and others still hope for a proletarian revolution, I suppose. This election abandoning view has lost support quite a bit, of course, after last election lead to the country going downhill. I understand if somebody says none of the candidates are their real choice, but we compromise in every other aspect of life, don’t we? Why not here? (especially, considering the historical fact that the more participation in election historically has always resulted in them having their say).

Anyway, just wanted to get this out of my system (the amount of news and discussions in Facebook and elsewhere has been overwhelming)...