Iranian election more democratic than U.S. election: Australian expert

Tehran Times, June 22, 2005

 

TEHRAN -- Dr. Fredrick Toben, the director of the Adelaide Institute in Australia, believes that the Iranian presidential election of June 17, in which 63 percent of eligible voters took part and seven candidates with diverse political inclinations contested, was much more democratic than the U.S. presidential election of 2004. On the eve of the election, the U.S. president hypocritically said the electoral process in Iran “ignores the basic requirements of democracy.” Following are the responses Toben gave in a brief interview with the Tehran Times on Sunday in which he expressed his views on the Iranian presidential election:

The Iranian election, in my view, was far more democratic than the election that brought U.S. President George W. Bush to power. It was also in the interest of the Iranian people. Whatever the president of the USA says about Iran, it will be to the benefit of the Zionist and racist state of Israel, and it will therefore lack any relevance for the Iranian people. The whole U.S. election process itself that brought George W. Bush the second presidency was fatally flawed through corruption.

The Iranian people are attempting to manage their own affairs from within the country, and comments from outside are designed only to effect regime change within Iran so that ‘Greater Israel -- from the Nile to the Euphrates’ -- will finally be established. The fact that the U.S. president lacks any civilized form of behavior towards the Iranian people -- branding Iran as an axis of evil -- indicates (that there is) little value in insisting he apologize to the Iranian people.

The peoples of the world who know how evil the current U.S. Bush regime is towards the Muslim world will also know that U.S. policy is determined by the neocons, who have only Zionist interests at heart which will help establish a One World Order. For that purpose it is necessary to effect regime change within Iran so that the whole Middle East becomes subjected to the neocons’ program for the Middle East. I do hope that the Iranian people will stand firm against any external pressure that comes from the U.S. in the guise of 'sweet talk' -- freedom and democracy. Wherever the U.S. has established its brand of freedom and democracy -- for example in Germany and Japan after World War Two -- it took the form of predatory capitalism offering consumerism and military occupation. Both Germany and Japan are still occupied, 60 years after the end of World War Two!

Many millions of people are watching and hoping that Iran can stand firm in its determination to solve its own problems in its own way and time.