A year ago, in days like these, a short call was published to collect signatures requesting a referendum on Iran's Constitution. Although the Iranian government blocked the website set up to gather signatures in support of this request in less than five days, about 37,000 people still managed to sign it. More than 400 organizations and individual cultural and political figures, inside and outside the country, supported this request.
More than 300 serious articles were written and published in defense or critique of this initiative. Dozens of interviews, press, radio and television roundtables, and speeches took place around this proposal. Most important of all, a broad spectrum of the country's political forces inside and outside Iran showed for the first time that they could unite around a specific demand. From senior clerics to university professors, from left to right, from republicans to constitutional monarchists, from students to political prisoners, they established unity, alignment and common direction in action while preserving their own positions and views. Inside Iran, three subsequent statements were published, signed by more than five hundred prominent political, academic and student figures. They put forward a demand close to the main demand of the call, namely changing the Constitution and the structure of the country. Outside Iran, seminars and gatherings were held in various countries such as Sweden, Germany and Belgium. Together these showed that the different parts of the referendum movement can coordinate with one another and pursue the strategy of unity in method while preserving their political and ideological distinctions and independence of action. In this way they can act in line with the movement as a whole and as part of it.
The events of past years, and especially of the last few months, have pushed the country down a slope of crisis and collapse that endangers the fate of every single Iranian. The current government took the reins of the country in an illegitimate election, and its actions are unprecedented in Iran's history in their sheer incompetence, lack of expertise and capacity for creating trouble. The government's interference in people's private lives has intensified, and people feel increasingly insecure at the hands of the regime's agents. Poverty and discrimination are rampant. Oil revenues have more than tripled, and the salaries of employees and workers ought to at least double. Yet the government and the Majlis are busy with new factional political games and sit idly by.
The events of the past year clearly showed that no reform toward the Iranian nation's historic demand for democracy, development and progress is possible within the framework of the country's current Constitution. The pursuit of the ineffective policy of reform from within led to the total rule of the authoritarians and to greater interference and powers for the Guardian Jurist (vali-e faqih, the Supreme Leader). Another flawed election proved that free, effective and fair elections that benefit the country and the nation are not possible within the power structure. Holding a referendum under the supervision of responsible international bodies is therefore a logical and reasonable demand of the Iranian nation.
Two clear camps have now emerged in the country and among its political forces. In one camp stand those who believe that the people are the true owners of the country and the masters of the house. In their view there is only one way to solve all problems: to ask the master of the house and seek the will of the Iranian nation. They therefore want to change the current Constitution. They believe that the institution of government must be based on democracy, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its supplementary covenants, and must derive its legitimacy solely and exclusively from the vote of the people. The foundations of the government's power must not lie in unelected institutions such as religious or hereditary ones, or in class and aristocratic privileges. Nor should the government interfere in matters of the people's religion and faith; it must be completely neutral toward people's beliefs and the private affairs of their lives.
In the other camp stand those who preserve the framework of the current Constitution and place the basis of the government's legitimacy somewhere other than the vote and will of the people. They want the government to be free to interfere in the private affairs of the people, including their religion and faith. In doing so, they inflict the greatest damage first and foremost on religion itself. If their path is pursued, the path being traveled right now, the crises inside and outside society will intensify, and the country will sink ever deeper into the swamp of violence and ruin.
But there is no third way between these two. Those who waver in between and try to have it both ways are wasting their own time and the nation's. Sooner or later they will be forced to take their place in one of these two camps.
This enormous welcome, support and mobilization following a simple call to sign a petition testifies to the soundness of the referendum movement's goal. A democratic, nonviolent movement based on civil resistance can lead the country out of its current crisis and turbulent passage to a desirable state by holding a referendum. This is the best
and least costly way to break the current deadlock and save the country.
The referendum movement is at the beginning of its road. Publishing the call was merely the introduction of a discourse, and the debates that followed have added to its depth and breadth. The movement's embryonic period has passed, and alignment has been established among those struggling for freedom. The next steps are these:
- proper organization and coordinated action;
- understanding the sensitivity of the current moment;
- avoiding individual and self-centered demands and haste;
- valuing collective work and minimal agreements;
- suspending ideological and epistemological differences and left and right economic views until the democracy movement succeeds.
These steps can turn the people's civil resistance into a means of securing a referendum and provide the social backing it needs.
In hope of that day
Ali Afshari, Nasser Zarafshan, Reza Delbari, Mohsen Sazegara, Akbar Atri, Mohammad Maleki, Abdollah Momeni