From: hallam@zeus02.desy.de (Phill Hallam-Baker)
Subject: Re: Soviet Nuclear Weapons Stolen? / The Count
Reply-To: Hallam@zeus02.desy.de
Organization: Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron, Experiment ZEUS bei HERA
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 12:37:26 GMT

In article <3640@copper.Denver.Colorado.EDU>,
aaldoubo@copper.denver.colorado.edu (Anisa Alnoor Aldoubosh) writes:

|>In article <1992Aug27.121902.16005@edf.fr> manuel@clt53lx.edf.fr (Jose Manuel
|>ESTEVEZ "clt50bx") writes:
|>>	IRAN is not a democratic country like all the Middle East countries Israel
|>include .
|>
|>Again, you have to define democracy.  If it means having a free and open
|>election, then yes, democracy can apply.  There was a huge thread stemming
|>from Israel and Democracy (being axonyms) last year and no one could
|>actually define Israeli democracy to be comparable to 'justice', 'freedom'
|>and inalienable rights to *all*, regardless of race, creed, etc. - only that
|>Israel holds free elections.
|>
|>Now in the case of Iran, there was an election.  And the people chose
|>an Islamic government.  The same in Algeria.  And who is to say that
|>Islam to Muslim people (whether by name or acknowledgement of such
|>by pure belief) and such traditional societies in the Middle East is
|>not democratic and that you can judge or compare it to western standards?

Taking a historical parallel in the English civil war may be helpful here. The
civil war involved massive rights abuses, imprisonments, arbitrary executions
etc and the persecution of Catholics. However the aftermath was rather different
and produced net gains for democracy, specificaly the acknowlegement of the
limited powers of the Crown, in this sense meaning the executive rather than the
monarch.

The Iranian democracy falls a long way short of what is desirable. However it is
better to recognise that there are elements which can be built on than dismiss
the whole enterprise. It took over 600 years from Simon De Monforts parliament
to the universal franchise in 1918 for true democracy to be granted in Britain.
There are still men and women alive who were debared from voting on grounds of
insufficient wealth.

What I hope will happen is a gradual strengthening of the democratic elements
and an isolation of the lunatic religious fringe. The main defect in Irans
democracy is the requirement that parliamentary candidates be "approved". Rather
than seeking to gain political capital out of this defect it is more productive
to suggest that candidartes should *additionaly* produce a nomination paper
supported by a number of nominees, within a short time the production of the
nomination paper alone will be the requirement to be a candidate and the
"approval" become a rubber stamping body.

Now why should a party in power want to do such a thing which is likely to mean
the demise of their parties power? The answer is that individuals are attached
to ideologies and policies, not to parties. Any party with a monopoly of power
inevitably becomes corrupted by position seekers who will suborn all their
principles in order to gain office. No amount of purges and loyalty tests can
ever help since the man with no principles is always at an advantage over those
without in these cases, it is like the requirement to take a religious oath, it
only excludes honest people for dishonest atheists will be prepared to take it.

If the religiously based parties do not release their stranglehold on power they
will become secularised from within. In order to maintain a theocratic element
in the workings of the state the theocrats must reliquish power. The alternative
would be to see the gradual corruption of the faith by politics in the same way
that the Church of England and the Roman Catholic church were and are
corrupted.



--

Phill Hallam-Baker
Xref: sparky talk.politics.mideast:19624 soc.history:8075 soc.culture.turkish:9721 soc.culture.greek:8497 soc.culture.europe:8144