Boycott or Participation?

Aydin Areta

First watch the excerpt from the debate between Dr Mostafa Mehrayeen and Abbas Abdi in the previous post, and then read this text.

In a relative comparison of the votes, the one who will be president is “No.” Refusing to participate in the election is the absent rival that remains in the lead and will probably remain there until the end. Whoever becomes president will stand in second place. My own vote, too, is nothing other than a “No” to despotism and a “Yes” to standing for what is truly the people’s right.

Nor will the reformists ever be able to win the presidency, or even reach the second round, without obtaining the votes of those who have remained silent.

For me, this “No” is fundamentally a choice grounded in personal values. From a consequentialist perspective, however, I believe that either a broad boycott or broad participation would produce a better outcome than this division, because absolutely nothing is more important than the people’s organic solidarity and a clear demonstration of their shared desire to continue the struggle for change. Yet the reality is that maximising either of these two outcomes requires a degree of social understanding that is very difficult to achieve in the absence of parties, trade unions, civil-society institutions and their leaders.

Whatever the result of the election, “No” will stand as the victor. But the most important question is whether this victory is merely a temporary negative act, or whether it represents an affirmative transformation in our way of life—a sign that we have said “Yes” to the most fundamental principles of freedom and a life lived through reflection.

In my view, “No” ceases to be merely negative when it can make possible a “Yes” to a way of living that has not yet become institutionalised in our social and political life and activism. Its methods are absent, and its ideals remain present only as superficial words.

The person who chooses “No” today must be capable of saying “No” not only to large-scale despotism but also to the methods and practices of petty despotism; they must say “No” to the methods of falsehood and despotism wherever they appear, and “Yes” to every call for reason and transformation wherever it arises. Only then will “No” to despotism cease to be merely negative and become, at its foundation, an affirmative and powerful “Yes” to living freely.

Conversely, the person who says “Yes” to the election in search of change and regards participation as an active political act must also be ready, after casting that difficult vote, to say “No” to the methods of despotism wherever they appear. The “Yes” they have chosen as a strategy acquires meaning only through the “No” that follows it. Without the capacity to say “No,” it means nothing other than saying yes to despotism.

The great question for those who want to participate is whether, after this “Yes,” they are prepared to possess the courage to say “No” as well.
Or is this “Yes” intended to delegate the struggle for change, and the subsequent “No”s and acts of resistance required for change, to a representative who is himself unstable in his own “Yes” and “No”? If this “Yes” is a delegation made in the hope of change, our contemporary history has shown that it will not be realised.

And what of those who say no? Can they move beyond this “No” and say “Yes” to the important values of freedom and responsible life in a society that is a rainbow of different beliefs? Values such as solidarity, acceptance of the other, and the effort to build bridges across social fault lines and remove the pointless boundaries that Balkanise society and fragment the identities of citizens?

The point is that one of these two perspectives regards saying “Yes” to the election as saying “No” to the fundamental values of democracy, while the other regards saying “No” to the election as passivity and as closing even the smallest openings for social change.
Whichever of these two views you believe in, are you prepared to accept this disagreement within a larger picture in which you stand together in pursuit of a shared goal?

The fact that they are unwilling to take responsibility for the morality patrols and the Noor Plan is precisely because they know that, together and in your shared demand, you stand as an absolute majority of society. If their denial of responsibility for their own decision is not an admission of your power and of the victory achieved by your movement, what is it?

Your power lies in your “shared desire” for change. Show that you recognise this power and have reached the maturity of not trying to drag all of society either to the ballot box or into the boycott camp—and, worse still, of not building a pointless wall between yourselves and others.

I believe every word Dr Mehrayeen says about non-participation, and I admire his wisdom and courage in saying what needs to be said. But I also know that his insistence upon this “No” acquires meaning from the larger “Yes” he has already given to the most fundamental principles of freedom. To understand this “No,” one must first, like him, have said “Yes” to all those principles.