The shoars kindled emotions: a yearning for unfulfilled promises of equality and freedom made during the early days of the 1979 revolution.
#EUPHORIA MEANING IN PERSIAN TV#
Mousavi's enthusiastic campaigners compensated for the TV time denied their candidate through the shoars that they shouted in the streets of major cities. Harsh words were exchanged when Ahmadinejad attacked Mousavi's record as prime minister.
#EUPHORIA MEANING IN PERSIAN SERIES#
State-sponsored television, for the first time in the life of the Islamic Republic, broadcast a series of lively debates among the candidates. Karrubi and Mousavi promised gender equality, better economic policies, and an end to corruption if they were elected.ĭuring the presidential campaigns, a sense of euphoria dominated national politics. However, it was the reformist candidates, Mehdi Karrubi, former speaker of the parliament, and Mir-Hossein Mousavi, Iran's prime minister during the Iran-Iraq war, who sparked the most interest among the public, and especially the youth. Mohsen Rezaie, a former Sepahi (the Iranian army of Guardians of the Islamic Republic) received modest state support. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Supreme Leader's favored candidate, running for his second term, had the advantage of advertisement time on the state-run TV and radio stations. The streets of Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz, and other cities were filled with enthusiastic campaigners for the four presidential candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karoubi, Mohsen Rezaie and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The young men in the streets, accompanied by an unprecedented number of young women yearning for freedom, improvement of economic conditions and better relations with other countries of the world, were determined to participate in the election, to exercise their right to vote and change the status quo. The four presidential candidates had to be vetted by an unelected body of clerics and jurists called the Guardian Council. “Choice,” however, is a relative concept in the Islamic Republic of Iran. For one month preceding the election day on June 12, 2009, young Iranians-men and women-who compose the majority of the country's population, poured into the streets all over Iran to campaign for the presidential candidate of their choice. In the absence of political parties and in light of the history of mass protests in Iran (such as led to the revolution of 1979), understanding this unique political expression is an important way of gauging opposition to the rhetoric of the state.
These protests and mottos ( shoar in Persian), chanted and simultaneously tweeted and YouTubed to the world, best illustrate the gradual but persistent change that has taken place in Iranian political culture.
Even if Iran's political institutions have so far remained intact in the face of the recent agitation, its political culture has forever changed, perhaps even reverted to the revolutionary state of 1979, a shift reflected in the slogans chanted by people in the streets. As images of the bloody crackdown by government militias and plainclothes policemen on the peaceful demonstrations were broadcast after the controversial results of the tenth presidential elections in Iran in late June 2009, the world was reminded of the Iranian Revolution of 1979.
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