Ahmadinejad’s crowds are scarily big -- but it’s unlikely
rock star Mousavi who’s got the kids screaming.
ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images
Baby kisser: Could Ahmadinejad be a goner after Friday's elections?
FP reviews the best moments from a wild Iranian campaign in this
photo essay.
Every
four years, in what has become a ritual of the country's election season,
Iran's public broadcaster allots a half-hour of primetime to each of the
country's presidential candidates, to use as they see fit. Anticipation was
highest for reformist candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi's film. Not only had
Mousavi earned the devotion of much of the country's youth and its urban middle
and upper classes, but it was widely considered a coup that his campaign had
signed one of Iran's most beloved directors, Majid Majidi, to direct his
campaign documentary. The film -- inspiring set pieces from around the country
and selections from the candidate's life devoted to service, all deftly woven
with religious undertones and nationalist music -- didn't disappoint.
There
were also plenty of visual reminders that Mousavi has become a vessel for the
hopes of the country's fervent population of university students -- the film
didn't lack for shots of chicly-dressed, flatteringly lit young people. But as
Ali, a student at University of Tehran who supports Mousavi, put it, "You get
the feeling that the filmmaker was more impressive than the star." Ali shook
his head contemplating all the mistakes his preferred candidate had made in the
single half-hour of footage. Recounting a scene in the film where a young man
together with his toddler boards Mousavi's campaign bus to complain about the
country's lack of equality, Ali shrieked in despair: "Why didn't he kiss that
baby?"
It's
not a question that supporters of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have to
ask. Ahmadinejad's life on the public stage has been an uninterrupted display
of populism, and his campaign style has reflected that, with call-and-responses
designed to appeal to working-class voters and deliberately traditional respect
paid to elders and, yes, to children. His ability to echo the culture is
undoubtedly his greatest political talent -- the common people never feel
condescended to by their president's embrace of their simple language and
rumpled fashions.
Mousavi
is an altogether more maladroit, disconnected politician. He sometimes mumbles
through his public appearances and reads from note cards without looking up.
Moreover, Mousavi -- prime minister of the country during the 1980s and
confidant of Iran's rulings elites ever since -- can't and would clearly prefer
not to make claim to the outsider, firebrand reputation that the current
president has carefully cultivated during his time in office.
He
talks only in generalities about his plans, his emphasis on competence and
"scientific management." He's made promises to loosen restriction on personal
freedom, but his ire is more drawn by Ahmadinejad's "dictatorial" flouting of
the checks and balances of the Islamic Republic's constitution. Mousavi
promises change, but no one would mistake him for Barack Obama. He might not
even qualify as a Michael Dukakis.
But
somehow this establishment technocrat continues to routinely elicit rock-star
receptions across the country. In the run-up to the election, much of grayish
Tehran has been draped in green, the official color of the Mousavi campaign.
The police and khaki-clad national guards have been forced to watch every day
as Tehran's youth -- Iran's baby boom generation of the 1980s -- assemble in
giddy pandemonium, distributing green bracelets and banners of protest against
Ahmadinejad's presidency, proselytizing to undecided pedestrians and whenever
in doubt shouting taunting cries of "Ahmadi, bye-bye!" At night, the chorus of
chants and laughter and hastily written campaign songs mingle with the din of
car horns.
Certainly,
Ahmadinejad's campaign outings can also get raucous. On Monday, the president
canceled an appearance at an overcrowded rally in central Tehran out of concern
for the safety of the attendees. (He ought to have been concerned anyway: The
way the crowds stampeded to leave the confined space, everyone fearfully
shouting and pushing, I consider myself lucky to have made it out uninjured.)
But
the daily spectacles for Mousavi have assumed a scale that is unprecedented for
the Islamic Republic, and it's precisely the novelty that fuels the
participants' fervor. Occasionally, Tehran's teenagers and twentysomethings
gain enough distance from their fun to witness and admire what they've
produced; sometimes they're prompted to consider their place in history. As
dusk settled one evening and an impromptu parade passed us on one of Tehran's
main thoroughfares, Fatemeh, a student at Tehran University clad in a dark
green headscarf, shook her head. "We've never seen this before," she said with
a tremble. "This is our revolution."
