The excitement continued to build. After a busy day we decided to hold a mock election on this Tuesday night. We were voting for who could sing the best Mousavi chant. In the end Aliakbar won. I wanted to make a joke to a youngster who was younger then 18 yet older then 15 that his vote wouldn't count. You see, in the last election, where Ahmadinejad won in the run off, the age of suffrage was 15: one and half years into his presidency, Iran changed the age to 18. In the end I didn't, though I probably should have extended the joke to all those present in the room, for, it would later appear, that none of the votes counted.
This was Mousavi's last public appearance before the election that I witnessed. In Iran, all public campaigning which includes the candidates and their supporters stops on the day before election day, in this case Wednesday night, June 10th, 2009.
What is most interesting in this video is a) the complete freedom of expression between police, army and both the supporters of Mousavi and Ahmadinejad. Clearly, there are very few Ahmadinejad supporters, but nonetheless, there was almost no violence between the two camps that I saw (except for the cut arm in the June 8th clip). Also what this clip documents like no other source material, is the chants of the Mousavi camp, how they start, who leads them, how they shift and how they are so creative.
As stated, subtitles will be coming soon, but it is very important to note for the time being the following:
1) 44 seconds in - Mousavi supporters scream at flag waving Ahmadi supporter "LIAR, LIAR, LIAR"
2) 1:05 minutes in - Mousavi supporters seated are chanting, "If there is any cheating, Iran will not sleep. If there is no cheating, Ahmadi will come in fifth place out of four candidates."
3: 2:25 minutes - Mousavi candidates changing up their chants leading to: Mousavi we love you!
The debates in the Iranian election played an enormously important role in generating even more interest in the election, after all, this election would be the first one where public debates between candidates would take place. Unlike other political systems, Iranian debates were between two candidates at once, instead of, for instance, all candidates for a party's presidential nominess as is found in the US system. As an aside, instead of two possible candidates for president, there were four candidates in the Iranian election of 2009: Mousavi, Karrroubi, Rezai and Ahmadinejad (in no particular order).
Jahan Azadi
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