Political alienation: Iran and Russia
The Economist reported that in the recent elections, "Turnout was modest. Government officials claimed that as many as 65% of Iran's 44m eligible voters took part, trumpeting this as a victory over foreign plots to undermine the Islamic revolution. Yet the Ministry of the Interior's own figures indicated a national turnout of 52%, and no more than 30% in Tehran..."Candidates in the capital, with a population of 12m, needed to capture at least a quarter of the 2m votes cast to win in the first round... the reformists struggled to rally supporters... many sympathisers seem to have seen no point in voting."
Iran is not the only country where some of the elite are alienated from politics according to Catriona Bass' report for TimesOnLine (London).
Russian politics: the bald truth
"Nothing in the world would have dragged [my St Petersburg friend] to the polling booth. Like most of my friends here, many of whom manned the barricades in 1991 to save their newfound political freedoms, she dismisses politics today in the way that most of the city's intellectuals did in Soviet times. Politicians are vulgar and to be ignored as far as possible..."... a smug respectability which has filled St Petersburg's central boulevards with art galleries, antiques shops, restaurants, theatres, boutiques and concert halls. The rattle of trams has been replaced by the ringing of church bells, car alarms and digital door codes...
"The President's supporters among the elite are highly visible, but [for]... the moment, consumerism and censorship seem to have killed off opposition politics in St Petersburg. My intellectual friend neither voted nor protested. She went to her dacha to ski in the forest and 'to eat and drink and forget about politics'."
Labels: elections, Iran, participation, Russia
posted by Ken Wedding @ 9:29 AM
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