Organizing for America | A. Reza Kashani's Blog: For those who unwittingly say: “the Supreme Leader of Iran is NOT an elected official?!”

For those who unwittingly say: “the Supreme Leader of Iran is NOT an elected official?!”

By ARK - Jun 16th, 2009 at 7:58 am EDT

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Those people should know the Leader is reconfirmed/reelected every single year by an elected body called the Leadership Experts Parliament or Majlis Kheberegaan Rahbari. Members of this Experts Parliament or Majlis are elected by the Iranian people. As a matter of fact during the last presidential elections just like all other presidential and parliamentary election; there were ballot boxes for Experts’ Majlis candidates to be elected by the people of Iran. Just like many countries, those elected experts, every year either reconfirm the Leader or if for any reason the present Leader could NOT be reelected, then they would elect a new leader.

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The limits of democracy in Iran | Report to Admin

By The Bard of Wilmette Jun 16th 2009 at 2:42 pm EDT (Updated Jun 16th 2009 at 2:42 pm EDT)

I do not know much about how Iran's leadership is structured, so this is not meant to contradict anything ARK is saying. I do believe, however, that when people refer to Iran's Supreme Leader as "unelected," they mean unelected in the sense that political leaders in Western countries are elected. In the U.S., as we all know, the president is elected by tens of millions of people in a freely contested election, and (with a few odd exceptions, like we had in 2000) the candidate with the most votes wins. In parliamentary systems, individual MP's are chosen in nationwide elections, and the leader of the largest party (or largest group of coalition parties) becomes the prime minister. In either system, there are two or more fully legitimate competing political parties, all adult citizens are free to vote their preferences, the elections are reasonably fair, and the results are generally respected by all sides. The system is not perfect, of course, but in general the people are free to choose their political leaders.

Unless my impressions are terribly mistaken, this is not really the case in Iran. It has some elements of democracy, but the recent presidential election looks very suspicious, to say the least, and the clerics who hold the real power do not have significant accountability to the general population. They also retain the right to deny the right of prospective presidential candidates, if not to their liking, even to be on the ballot.

As I said above, I do not know a lot about this subject, but these are my general impressions. If I am wrong, please set me straight.

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