Publishing Articles in English and Farsi (hopefully in the future).

Saturday, May 17, 2003

 
Opinion: Abbas Amir-Entezam, Iran’s Nelson Mandela?
Mohandes (Engineer) Abbas Amir-Entezam, 68, the longest serving Iranian political prisoner during 23 of the past 24 years of the reign of the Islamic Republic of Iran has once again been summoned in front of the Clerical Judiciary to account for his latest call for a genuine referendum and free elections in Iran.

Amir-Entezam, the deputy prime minister to Mehdi Bazargan’s first post-1979 revolution government in Iran was arrested when he returned from his diplomatic post in Sweden -after the siege of American embassy in Nov 1980 by a group of students calling themselves “followers of Imam (Khomeini)’s path� - and charged with treason on trumped-up charges of spying for the Iran’s then enemy, the United States of America. [for more information about Abbas Amir-Entezam, see http://www.entezam.org].

The latest move by the Islamic judiciary, appointed by the clerical leader Khamenei (Khomeini’s successor), to “interview� the 68 year old ailing Amir-Entezam is a sign of desperation by a regime deeply concerned about his call for true democracy and free elections, a call also echoed by the most radical student organisations in the country, gaining momentum and becoming ubiquitous.

Currently, within Iran’s internal political landscape, there is talk of two other referendums. The reformists within the Islamic Parliament and President Khatami’s government are pushing for the ‘twin’ legislations to strengthen Khatami’s hand within the confines of the current Islamic constitution and to push back the right wing Khamenei appointed clerics of the so-called “Council of Guardians of the Islamic Republic Constitution� (CGIRC) who control every election and oppose any reform. The reformists have been threatening a referendum on the issue if CGIRC does not back down. Recently Khatami apparently stormed out of a meeting authorising the doubling of CGIRC’s budget. The conservative clerics are clearly not showing any signs of backing down. They know that such a referendum (to ask if people support the twin legislations) will never happen. This is because despite three major presidential and parliamentary elections and clear mandates for reform, nothing has changed. Therefore in the recent local elections (March 2003), a large majority of Iranian people especially in the large cities, chose to express their votes by abstention. Once again they demonstrated that despite what the reformists might have thought, people value their votes. The Iranians seem to be saying to their twice elected President they believe his twin legislations are “Nooshdarooye Pas az Marge Sohrab�, i.e. too little, too late!

A second referendum is being talked about by the powerful Rafsanjani (ex-President and ex-leader of Parliament and now heading the Expediency Discernment Council of the IRI) supposedly to ascertain if the people of Iran were in favour of the normalisation of relations with the USA. And all this only a few months after Abbas Abdi, a leading reformer and an ex-student follower of Imam’s path (who occupied the American embassy ‘nest of spies’ in 1980) was jailed and “confessed� under torture to being a tool of the Americans. Abdi was leading an Iranian ‘Pollster Organisation’ that conducted a poll showing an overwhelming majority of Iranian people supporting the normalisation of relations with the USA! Clearly, Rafsanjani, who stated that he had always been in favour of “relations with the USA on an equal basis�, has seen the writing on the wall after what has happened to the East and now West of Iran. His referendum will also never happen as to the sophisticated Iranian electorate it is merely a desperate ploy of a has-gone politician to expedite his regime’s survival.

But what are the chances of a genuine referendum, under the auspices of the United Nations, that Amir-Entezam has called for? A decade ago, another long-standing political prisoner was freed by his jailors under international and domestic pressure to lead his people into his country’s first genuine and democratic elections that made him a President. He was the legendary Nelson Mandela, a leader of African National Congress (ANC) and now an ex-President of the Republic of South Africa.

Such a predicament is probably far from Amir-Entezam’s thoughts as he is facing his tormentors again. His standing world-wide is no where close to Mandela, he may hardly be known outside Iran. The people of Iran, however, are proud to tell the world that they have political personalities such as Amir Entezam (leading member of Pro-Mossadegh “Iranian National Front� inside Iran) that are true democrats. A quarter of a century ago, politicians such as Bazargan and Entezam were derided as “liberals� or “compromising�. Now most of the ex-revolutionaries of the Iranian left and Islamic fundamentalism respect their moderation and conciliatory politics. In Today’s politics of West versus Islam and George Bush versus the ‘axis of evil’, politicians such as Entezam stand out for Iranian patriotism and independence while also representing Iran’s wish to draw a line against its Pro and then Anti West politics for good.