A coalition of Iranian dissidents inside the country have issued an appeal for a nationwide referendum to choose between the constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran and a new constitution based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This invitation is a veiled method of announcing that the reform movement of the Khatami era is dead and nothing but a secular democracy can liberate the Iranian people from the grip of their tyrannical rulers.
Since many signatories of the appeal began their opposition to the reigning ayatollahs as reformers, their call for a plebiscite on the essential claims of the theocratic order is equivalent to rejecting the legitimacy of the regime and embracing the democratic path.
Mansour Farhang is responding to Mohsen Sazegaras proposal for a referendum on a new Iranian constitution, Irans road to democracy
See also the article by Afshin Molavi in our Iran debate, Democracy & Iran
For an introduction to the debate, see David Hayess Iran between revolution and democracy
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Iranian activists abroad ought to be inspired by the courage of the brave men and women who struggle for freedom in the oppressive environment of the Islamic Republic. We are all aware that they risk arrest and torture by publicly protesting the arbitrary rule of the self-appointed viceroys of God on earth.
Over the past twenty-six years, many such individuals have paid with their lives or long-term imprisonment when they frustrated the attempts of the clerical rulers to terrorise Iranian society into complete silence. The fact that dissidents inside the country have to present their views in an ambiguous or metaphoric manner should not be seen as a sign of vagueness or indecisiveness about the nature of the regime or the need to confront it in its totality. We all want to expose the corrupt and cruel character of the Iranian theocracy while promoting the spirit of human rights and democracy.
Outside the country, we are free to name the brutes and dissect the retrogressive nature of their rule, but those who try to convey the same message within Iran could become the target of the Islamic Republics fascistic practices. They therefore have to use the contradictions, pretensions and weaknesses of the governing system in order to express their views within the limits of the prevailing threats.
They cannot name the brutes who exercise power at the top of the political hierarchy without being accused of endangering the security of the state. Yet, like the Iranian filmmakers who manage to show the ugly face of theocratic dictatorship through their art and artistry, Irans dissidents are doing an effective job of keeping the pro-democracy discourse open and assertive under difficult circumstances.
The signatories of the referendum appeal are fully aware that the regime will never permit the general population to vote on the issue. But by issuing and defending the invitation they have generated an edifying conversation about the indispensability of popular sovereignty, political equality and majority rule for a civil and progressive Iran: principles that defy the essence of the regime and expose its inherent cruelty.
We need to evaluate the initiatives of Iranian dissidents by what they contribute to the struggle for democracy within the oppressive confines of an arrogant theocracy, and not by the standards that please their compatriots in Berkeley or Berlin.
