Society has its own Priorities
During the last four years, the political picture of Holland has undergone instructive changes.
During 2002, just a week before the Parliamentary elections, an extremist right-wing personality Pim Fortuyn who had a good chance of being elected to the legislature, was murdered after being shot several times in the head and neck by a young man with leftist views. This event rapidly changed the political atmosphere in favor of the victim?s political views and ideology and caused the parties in the government at the time, liberal and Christian democrats, to also shift to the right in order to better compete with their new challengers. This left a distinct mark on the policies of the governments of the time. One consequence of the murder was that the group of extreme right-wing Parliamentary candidates who supported Fortuyn and had gathered around to form the ?Fortuyn list? scored a momentous and unexpected victory in the elections, despite not having even a single seat prior to the event. They got 26 out of 150 seats in the legislature.
The resultant effect of these events was that the whole political climate in Holland turned to the right to an unprecedented degree. This strengthened the Dutch ?neo-conservatists?, increased pressures on immigrants and especially Muslims, and a closer affinity between the government and government of US President George Bush (especially regarding the war on terrorism). Obviously this produced a response from the left-wing groups and parties in Holland, which produced a kind of ideological confrontation on some issues such as foreign policy or anti-foreign views. This has been the climate in Holland for the last four years and debates over these issues stemming from such divergent poles have preoccupied Dutch politics and political parties and activists.
More recently, however, things have begun to change. Now on the eve of new parliamentary elections, one notices that tangible economic and social issues relating to the population in general are gradually replacing the ideological and cultural debates of the past four years. Instead of endless arguments over immigration, Muslims, etc, there are now more discussions on how to increase economic productivity, issues related to the aging population, labor shortage, etc.
How does this relate to Iran? Even though there is no real democracy in Iran, and therefore any comparison between events there and in Europe can be meaningless, still there are some lessons that may be applicable from the Dutch situation. In Iran a president came to power last year on the promise of economic and social (and not political or ideological) changes. But as soon as his cabinet took form, it began to instigate right-wing views in the ideological and cultural domains. The political and ideologic views and announcements of the new Iranian officials soon dominated the news headlines around the world.
A year later today, what is now increasingly occupying the energy and time of the new government in Iran are the tangible economic and social issues and demands. This stems from the pressures and demands made by the public who have still not forgotten Mr. Ahmadinejad?s promises of giving priority to their economic and social problems, as opposed to issues such as nuclear energy, or philosophizing about the Holocaust or letter-writing to heads of states around the world. Their calls are for job security, economic stability, fighting inflation, attending to social issues, and the likes.
With the continuation of the state of affairs in Iran where these tangible problems only get more compounded and acute, public opinion too shifts away from the irrelevant issues that have dominated the political and social atmosphere over the past year. One can expect that the focus of the government on hardline ideologic issues too will wane and be replaced with focus on the real economic and social issues that preoccupy the lives of ordinary people.
But a change to this new atmosphere will require new political relations and realities. Among the critics of the Iranian regime, are there those who are prepared to take up the management of the situation? It does not appear so. It appears that the debates and focus of the groups opposing and criticizing the Iranian regime too are merely response to and based on the political and ideologic behavior of the Islamic regime.
In fact, issues such as economic growth, combating corruption, fighting poverty, attending to social issues are still not the focus or part of the debates or discussions, and more importantly programs of the groups that criticize the regime in Tehran. And this is despite the fact the public continues to struggle with these issues on a daily basis, regardless of the ideologic battles and drives of the government.
This gap between the public and the elite has worked to the detriment of groups opposing the regime and has returned surprising results when the masses have had a chance to express their views in the past. Is it not the time for these groups to alter the focus of their attention and discussions to more realistic issues called on by the public?