Thursday, May 07, 2009

Election and Video Clips

Presidential candidates in Iran are using internet and its venue as much as they can to publish their ideas and their campaign material. One of the most recent ones is titled: "From the past to the future". You can see it here:

http://mowj.ir/ShowNews.php?6458

The 16 minutes clip suggests Mr. MirHussein Mousavi's candidacy is the next step in Iranian people's 100 years long struggle for democracy. The clip begins with snapshots from constitutional revolution era then continues with clips from oil nationalization movement and Dr. Mossadeq, during which the music is playing "Ey Iran", unofficially considered to be the national anthem in Iran, then it shows the coup against him and his exile and then it moves forward to clips and photos from Imam Khomeini, then offers speeches by Mr. Bazargan, the first primier of Islamic Republic, and by Dr. Shariati, who is considered to be the ideologist of revolution . It covers revolution with movies and photos from 1978-1980 and songs from this era. It broadcasts a speech from Ayatollah Taleghani. Then there is war, reform movement and at the end a few minutes talks, clips and photos focused on Mr. MirHussein Mousavi himself. The clip is a beautiful one and could be considered as a musical history of the past 100 years.
However one has to take some parts of it with a grain of salt; Mr. Mousavi's government banned Mr. Bazargan's supporters' main party; Nehzat e Azadi ye Iran, and his minister of interior, Mr. Mohtashami, turned down their requests for permits for political activities several times and disqualified their candidates for parliamentary elections. Overall many might argue that this clip claims affiliations that one hardly knew anything about them when Mr. Mousavi was the prime minister... although this might be a too simplistic view of history, and main street people are not used to complicated analysis of historical events, which might justify such claims. However one must admit that he remains the man of hour, receiving support from students, intellectuals and old reformists.

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