election-finale

What happened? Why this happened?

Did someone do anything wrong? Now that we had a real competition with real campaigns and different ideas how did an ugly man with even uglier thoughts become president? I don't want to write! I don't want to hear the news! I don't want to believe!

But there is still hope. It may not be as bad as it seems, I hope!

Elections

It's unbelievable! It is absolutely surprising and unexpected! I still can't imagine who would vote to Ahmadinezhad! He is getting closer to be in the second position in presidential elections of Iran and he is going to the second round for a run-off with Hashemi. And may be the most amazing thing is that he has got the first place in Tehran and Karaj, the important city near Tehran. This is not happening! It is like a nightmare. He is an extremist and has been a member of the guardians of revolution. A person with military experiences during the war and extremist thoughts about exporting the Islamic revolution to the world! I was expecting to see Hashemi as number one as it happened and Moin and Ghalibaf as number two and three, but this! I still can't believe it. Even Karrubi, the former president of parliament was not expected to get a high vote. But until last night in the first hours he was even number one. The hope for a continuing reform in the coming four years has died for me. We will again take a step back to reconsider our tactics and ways and we will come back. This is a process which eventually will result in a better Iran. Even this election was a good way of practicing democracy with tough campaigns and real competition. This is democracy, to accept the lost and while not on power, reconsidering our ways and in the same time to watch over those who have power and not let them misuse that. After a hundred years from the first revolution of Iran towards democracy we have still a long way to go to practice and practice and getting better in playing with the rules of the game, a game called democracy.

World cup

These are some photos from last night showing the streets of Tehran after the football match where with a vitory over Bahrain Iran gained its third qualification to world cup.

And these are photos which show the step by step victory of a few stuborn women to win their right to watch the football game in the stadium: They Came, They Saw, Thay Conquered!!

Football politics

It had happened before, eight years ago, when everybody rushed to the streets after a surprising and critical draw in a match with Australia which qualified Iran for the world cup in France. And this time I missed it again. I missed all the joy and action in the streets. Last time during the first half of the game I was going back home from school. Just before the start of the game streets were full of people looking for something to get them home as soon as possible. Cars were driving madly to take their passengers to front of their TVs. And just after 20 minutes into the game, when I was still in the streets you could see nobody in the city. Absolutely nobody was there and the silence made you think that the city is dead. But the "renaissance" was on the way. It was an unforgettable match in the history of football games in Iran. There are still some people who live with the memory of that game and those miraculous two goals in 5 minutes which led Iran to the world cup in front of the 60,000 Australians in Melbourne. But when the game finished as I was preparing for the entrance exams of the university I was doomed to stay at home and watch over my little sister while everybody left, some for shopping(in those mad minutes after the game!) and some for work. All the sound and joy from the streets was penetrating inside and seducing me to go out and join the people. Anyway those days past and yesterday just a week or so before the election, Iran again witnessed a street carnival of people dancing and signing in the streets and the police was just watching. Some even have called it the "Green Revolution" of Iran. But the truth is football has always been manipulated by politicians in Iran or at least it seems so. In 1978 when Iran qualified for the world cup for the first time it was during its hottest year of history so everybody boycotted football in certain ways because everyone believed that this is a tool the regime is using to cool down the people. This time it seems that they are doing the same thing. Letting women into the stadium -although just a few of them- after several years of fight over this right, president Khatami going to stadium for the first time after the revolution and dancing and singing of the people in the streets without any interference from the police or hardliners could mean only one thing. It's one week to the elections and they don't want to give the people any more excuses to abandon the elections.

I just talked to one of my friends. She was telling me that her brother and her friends have danced in the streets until morning, until there was no energy left for them to dance more! I really missed being there.

Exams and Elections

Today I did my one before last exam! There is only another exam remaining and several though projects to do! One of the presentations will be on Thursday and I'm still far behind but I can't resist the temptation to write in here. This is some kind of basic human instinct, whenever I'm under a pressure specially of this nature I try every way to run from it and writing in here is one of them, and boy, is there so much to tell or what! Let me start with the hottest one as it is only an hour old.

An hour ago I got a letter from NBC News to do an interview with them about the presidential elections. But the sad part is that they were coming to Tehran and they thought I'm in Iran. Now I really regret why I'm not there in these days. But that is just one moment. After a few hours I'm going to forget about this and realize how pitiful our condition is with this nonsense election.

They have put us in a really ironical condition. This time no one is sure about the right thing to do. To vote or not to vote! In a multilayer community like Iran even deciding not to vote won't change anything because there is always more than 50% of people who will vote and nobody can blame them for it. They are simply a part of this country which mostly don't expect so many things from a government. No freedom of speech, no extra rights for women, no political freedoms, no rights to criticize the high leaders and none of those things that most of the young generation desires and we write about them in our weblogs. They simply want a president who would be able to reduce the daily pressure which they feel in their mind because of many different issues in their life. They also somehow know that nothing is going to change with this election. Voting today is just a daily habit. They are told to vote, they are also so tired of everything that they don't have the energy and nerve to argue over that, they also know several other things, like for example they know these candidates are all part of the same system which has had the power in the past quarter of the century and all of them have proved the peak of their abilities(if they even have a peak!). So why argue about voting or not voting when there isn't any light of hope even in the far distance? But I have one hope. As most of the people of Iran are already tired of any kind of sudden change or revolution and this process of reform is in the motion in lower layers of the community it will eventually succeed but not in the near future. It might take 20 or 50 years but it will finally succeed because it is a natural process which proceeds with the evolution of people and society. Nobody can force any democracy or a modern way of life to a group of people when they aren't themselves democrat or modern. In order to change a country the people of that country must make that change in their everyday life ,otherwise nobody else can help them.