Apathy shadows Iranian election...

...because they know what a real election looks like.

You'd be apathetic too if you 1) remembered what Iran used to be 2) realized what it is now and 3) saw your neighbors voting like only free men can.

From The Boston Globe:

Iranians vote for a new president today after a short, lackluster campaign that often seemed less about who would win than about how many people would bother to cast ballots. Even so, the voting could lead to a dramatic showdown between hard-liners and reformers.

Over the past two years, the unelected Islamic clerics who hold the real power in Iran have bludgeoned the liberalization program of outgoing President Mohammad Khatami, and few people appear to believe his successor will fare any better.

The apparent front-runner in a field of seven candidates is former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a politically cagey member of the original Islamic revolutionary leadership who is trying to reposition himself as a moderate. Most observers think neither Rafsanjani nor the chief reformist candidate will win outright. That could set up a tense runoff at the end of next week in which Iranians will either endorse Khatami's thwarted reformist efforts or bow to the conservative Islamic rule under which they have lived for the past 26 years.

The clerics excluded virtually everyone who advocated greater personal freedoms from running for Parliament last year, and religious conservatives now firmly control the legislature. The religious leadership has forced about 100 independent newspapers to close. Disillusion with Islamists and reformers alike is widespread and open.

''Why do we have to vote?" asked Jawad A., a construction worker who attended a rally for Rafsanjani on the closing night of the campaign and declined to give his full name. ''The officials, the leaders don't care about us," Jawad added, complaining of broken promises, extreme unemployment, and deprivation in his hometown of Khorram Shahr. He said he would not vote even if Khatami, for whom he voted four years ago, was running because ''he did nothing."

What's the definition of an Iranian moderate?
A religious fanatic who'll kill you quickly!
(Thank you. I'll be here all week!)