Tom Pepinsky

Category: Politics

  • "Elections" in Iran

    From a CNN.com article about Rumsfeld’s condemnation of the Iranian elections as a sham.

    "So the fact that they had a mock election and elected a hard-liner
    ought not come to any surprise to anybody because all the other people
    were told they couldn’t run."

    Rumsfeld’s comments are pretty much absolutely right here.  The election in Iran was not anywhere close to the type of election that a real democracy would have.  There ruling Guardian Council, a bunch of theocrats who decide the limits under which democracy will function in Iran, has completely emasculated any functioning opposition in within the country.  Given a restricted set of candidates and restrictions on the types of things that could be debated, Iranian voters did not have the full range of choice that they should have had.

    It strikes me (TP) as sadly predictable, though, that the current administration has made such a fuss about this sham election while claiming success in other sham elections.  Are we really supposed to believe that Egypt deserves credit for "opening up" its electoral process to some more dissent and a bit more opposition activity?  Are we supposed to congratulate Saudi Arabia for having municipal elections even though it’s a monarchy?  This, after all, is the much lauded new awakening of the Arab people to democracy and liberalism.

    Here’s another option.  The current administration believes that when dictatorships have fake elections that return US allies, it’s a "step towards democracy".  Conversely, when dictatorships have fake elections that return irrascible conservative Islamists, it’s an "illegitimate election".  We should note that despite the restrictions on candidacy, the conduct of Iran’s elections is probably more fair in procedural terms than elections any where else in that part of the world, starting at the Turkish border and ending in India.

    A subject that attracts scholarly interest every decade or so is the question of what, exactly, makes a democracy.  Like, how do you know a democracy when you see one?  It’s a surprisingly difficult thing to answer with any degree of precision, but everyone believes that if nothing else, free and fair elections are the gold standard of democracy.  But then you have the question of what, exactly, is a free and fair election?  If can two elections be on the whole unfair, but one is "more fair" than the other?  If so, is that country "more democratic"?  It’s hard, but one thing is for sure, Iran–like Egypt–doesn’t have free elections, and that’s too bad.

  • I Don't Get It

    Why do governments have to be so screwy? TP gets to spend all his time reading about the weird policies of the goverment here, while I (jm) get to talk with actual, hard-working government employees who tend to have some serious grievances with their employers. I get really frustrated just listening to the stories, I can’t imagine having to work in these departments.

    Take this guy I met yesterday, for example. He was just informed that he has been awarded a scholarship to get a Master’s Degree in Medical Devices or Medical Physics. Problem number one is that he has only until October to find a program and get started, or else he loses the funding. It is pretty much too late to get into any program for the fall term right now, so the only hope is to quickly get admitted somewhere for the spring term and then hope the goverment is lenient about the timing. Problem number two is that there are no courses that I could find called “Medical Devices”. I’ve run into this problem several times already; students come in looking for majors which are worded differently here than in the States. The problem is that for government scholarships, they won’t give you funding if you don’t go for a program with that exact name. So he can look for medical physics programs (which he is not really interested in) or try for something else that comes close in the name department. But basically, the government has given him a generous scholarship that he can’t possibly use.

    Today I saw a women from another government ministry who wants to get a PhD in Health Economics (this program does exist, thankfully). She applied for a government sponsorship scholarship last year, and was told, among other things, that she is too young. This woman has an M.D., a Master’s in Finance, and a Master’s in Public Policy, all foreign degrees. So she’s not that young. The oldest you can be to qualify for a scholarship from the government is 45, so she argued with the guy and said that if she waits until she is 45, by the time she finishes her PhD she will almost be ready to retire. This sounds like a pretty strange way of doing things; you’d think if you were funding further study, you’d want to assure that you’d get lots of return on the investment. So she applied again this year, and has not heard the results yet. At her interview this time, she was told that she was overqualified, and that she should just go back to the hospital and doesn’t need to bother with a PhD. Again, this seems kind of strange. Here is a woman who has worked in all areas of this ministry (including the hospital setting) for 14 years, has used all three of her advanced degrees to the ministry’s advantage (including doing tax work herself instead of the department having to hire an accountant), and they feel like telling her that she doesn’t need a PhD? What nonsense. Oh, and there was one other thing. She’s Indian, and as she said, “the color of my skin is a little bit off.” I’m guessing that this unfortunately has something to do with her frustrations. But, like so many other ballsy professional Indian women I’ve met here, she’s decided to go and she’s going to make it work somehow, period. Good for her.

    This brings me back to the whole problem of education here in Malaysia that TP has recently posted about. Its like they’re trying to do the right thing but going about it all wrong. These are not the only two cases I’ve seen like this, I’ve probably seen at least 9 or 10, and crazy educational requirements which are impossible to fulfill make for some very frustrated citizens.