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Comments on ‘By the Thousand’
Arash Jalali at May 29, 2005 05:56 PM:
I think the translation that the "Chamber of Iran" people have provided for article 115 is not accurate. Article 115 is ambiguous on whether women are qualified to run for president or not. So I guess it would be more appropriate if one preserves this ambiguity in the English translation by using "statesman" instead of "political personality". The word used in the original Farsi text is "Rejaal-eh Syaasi". Also, I disagree with you, Babak, when you wrote that the reason for the rather high number of registrants is the political system. I think the fact that people (some almost totally illiterate, and some evidently nut cases) came to register is because the law allowed them to. I suspect that if the procedure for becomming a presidential candidate had been like this in the U.S., you would probably witness the same thing there too. In fact, on a smaller scale,... [more at the permalink of the entry above]
Knight at May 30, 2005 03:20 AM:
I found it positive that so many people registered as presidential candidates. At least they brought some enthusiasm to the table. Plus being illiterate may be bad but it's much better than being a murdurer like Rafsanjani. I think picking a random one among those thousand candidates is a better bet than any of the qualified six, maybe except Moeen.
sadaf at May 31, 2005 08:25 PM:
the reason why so many people even registered was because they were allowed to. as a rule of thumb in Iran, you don't have to be educated or from good morale or any other of these criteria to qualify for presidency. you only have to know the game, so why do you think those people that registered could have been disqualified???? why not qualified??
Babak S at June 1, 2005 02:09 AM:
Arash and sadaf: You have both written that you think so many people registered since they were "allowed to" (by law), but neither of you have provided a reasoning for this statement. Here's why I think this staement is incorrect if you forgive some repetition of what I has written earlier. I cannot understand what you mean by this usage of the verb "allow." It's either of the two things: 1- They were "allowed," in the sense that they were allowed entry to the registeration site and were allowed to fill out the registeration forms. Given that they could not know at the time if they would be qualified, this was just like filling out an application form. But this is absurd. what kind of law can one enact to "disallow" even this? So it must be the follwing. 2- They were "allowed," in the sense that the legal... [more at the permalink of the entry above]
Babak S at June 1, 2005 02:29 AM:
A clarification: I don't think a high number of registerants is necessarily a bad thing. As Knight said it can boost or bring in enthusiasm. Surely an election with just one (to take the extreme) is not considered fair and representative. But there's a limit to this enthusiasm, and that is set by the number of irreducibly differing views in the society so that each one must have a representative of its own. 1014 is well beyond that limit. As it usually happens in a democratic society, the political mechanisms set the number of contenders below such a limit well before they go to register. The details are many, varied and boring perhaps — the upshot is that the irreduciblly different views, through these mechanisms, meaningfully find their representatives. Then they register. So the actual registerarion takes place well before the formal one.
Arash Jalali at June 1, 2005 04:28 PM:
Ok Babak I got your point. So just to make sure I understood your argument, in short, you are saying that whatever criteria the verb "allow" entails, there are always large enough people to fit those criteria, and there are also large enough people to come forward to register. And from this, you infer that the unusually high registrant turn out is not because the entry criteria are too permissive, but because there is this huge hole in our political system left by the lack of mechanisms (such as political parties) that could help make these at least 1014 differing (if not diagonally opposing) views converge. However, I think you are overlooking certain facts: 1- We are not talking about a uniform "sample space" here. Some 250 of the registrant did not even have a highschool diploma. I hope you agree that a smaller sample space, provided that the... [more at the permalink of the entry above]
LEROY at April 27, 2006 03:44 PM:
I WANT TO JOIN,CALL ME, 0039-3491652652.