Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Count Down blogs: "things related to Iran are treated in such a degree of sloppiness and vagueness even by people like Professor Francis Fukuyama. Examples: -The elections in Iran are bundled together with elections elsewhere in the Middle East to prove the point that Islamism is on the rise, and push for elections isn't really working. -Iran is a semi-democracy (whatever the term means) and democratic but not liberal (amusingly enough, Iran is the only example of an illeberal democracy in Prof. Fukuyama's famous book).

It is both sad and funny that Iran is held to standards much lower than even Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe when assessing the "democratic degree" of its elections. Few cases of fraud and intimidation are enough for the West to dismiss the election results in Belarus but in Iran election of Ahmadinejad becomes a hotly debated topic and evidence as to how "democratic" means can produce "illiberal" results. Official election figures are thrown around as valid data points as if the freeness and the fairness of the election were rubber-stamped by no less than Jimmy Carter himself."