Kenapa Indonesia belum memberi ucapan selamat kepada Ahmadinejad, yang
terpilih lagi dalam pemilihan Presiden Iran?
Kabarnya Jusuf Kalla sudah memberi ucapan selamat, tetapi dalam kapasitas
pribadi. Karena, untuk mewakili Indonesia, harus SBY selaku Presiden RI.
Kalah cepat lagi nih!
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The Iranian People Speak
By Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty
Monday, June 15, 2009
The election results in Iran may reflect the will of the Iranian people. Many
experts are claiming that the margin of victory of incumbent President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad was the result of fraud or manipulation, but our nationwide public
opinion survey of Iranians three weeks before the vote showed Ahmadinejad
leading by a more than 2 to 1 margin -- greater than his actual apparent margin
of victory in Friday's election.
While Western news reports from Tehran in the days leading up to the voting
portrayed an Iranian public enthusiastic about Ahmadinejad' s principal
opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi, our scientific sampling from across all 30 of
Iran's provinces showed Ahmadinejad well ahead.
Independent and uncensored nationwide surveys of Iran are rare. Typically,
preelection polls there are either conducted or monitored by the government and
are notoriously untrustworthy. By contrast, the poll undertaken by our
nonprofit organizations from May 11 to May 20 was the third in a series over
the past two years. Conducted by telephone from a neighboring country, field
work was carried out in Farsi by a polling company whose work in the region for
ABC News and the BBC has received an Emmy award. Our polling was funded by the
Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
The breadth of Ahmadinejad' s support was apparent in our preelection survey.
During the campaign, for instance, Mousavi emphasized his identity as an Azeri,
the second-largest ethnic group in Iran after Persians, to woo Azeri voters.
Our survey indicated, though, that Azeris favored Ahmadinejad by 2 to 1 over
Mousavi.
Much commentary has portrayed Iranian youth and the Internet as harbingers of
change in this election. But our poll found that only a third of Iranians even
have access to the Internet, while 18-to-24-year- olds comprised the strongest
voting bloc for Ahmadinejad of all age groups.
The only demographic groups in which our survey found Mousavi leading or
competitive with Ahmadinejad were university students and graduates, and the
highest-income Iranians. When our poll was taken, almost a third of Iranians
were also still undecided. Yet the baseline distributions we found then mirror
the results reported by the Iranian authorities, indicating the possibility
that the vote is not the product of widespread fraud.
Some might argue that the professed support for Ahmadinejad we found simply
reflected fearful respondents' reluctance to provide honest answers to
pollsters. Yet the integrity of our results is confirmed by the politically
risky responses Iranians were willing to give to a host of questions. For
instance, nearly four in five Iranians -- including most Ahmadinejad supporters
-- said they wanted to change the political system to give them the right to
elect Iran's supreme leader, who is not currently subject to popular vote.
Similarly, Iranians chose free elections and a free press as their most
important priorities for their government, virtually tied with improving the
national economy. These were hardly "politically correct" responses to voice
publicly in a largely authoritarian society.
Indeed, and consistently among all three of our surveys over the past two
years, more than 70 percent of Iranians also expressed support for providing
full access to weapons inspectors and a guarantee that Iran will not develop or
possess nuclear weapons, in return for outside aid and investment. And 77
percent of Iranians favored normal relations and trade with the United States,
another result consistent with our previous findings.
Iranians view their support for a more democratic system, with normal relations
with the United States, as consonant with their support for Ahmadinejad. They
do not want him to continue his hard-line policies. Rather, Iranians apparently
see Ahmadinejad as their toughest negotiator, the person best positioned to
bring home a favorable deal -- rather like a Persian Nixon going to China.
Allegations of fraud and electoral manipulation will serve to further isolate
Iran and are likely to increase its belligerence and intransigence against the
outside world. Before other countries, including the United States, jump to the
conclusion that the Iranian presidential elections were fraudulent, with the
grave consequences such charges could bring, they should consider all
independent information. The fact may simply be that the reelection of
President Ahmadinejad is what the Iranian people wanted.
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