Brainless & the Ballots

Inside cavernous Sepahsalar Mosque, by the light of bare electric bulbs, Teheran officials last week tabulated the fruits of the electoral process in Iran. For three days the city had been voting for its twelve Deputies to the National Majlis. The tellers sat solemnly around little tables, fished into metal boxes, pulled out ballots and shouted names and numbers to colleagues who carefully inscribed them in big books. Boys ran in & out through the cigarette haze bearing little cups of Turkish coffee and glasses of strong tea to fortify the ballot checkers.

As is the custom in Iranian elections, it was all pretty much a fraud. The twelve lucky winners had been decided before the first voter dropped his scrap of paper into the metal box. All were supporters of Premier Fazlollah Zahedi's government. The voters, with cynicism born of experience, knew what to expect. One Teheran elector dropped his ballot in the box, then salaamed deeply three times to the container. Asked why, he retorted: "This box is magic. One drops in a ballot for Mohammed and lo, when the box is opened, it becomes a vote for Fazlollah."

Knives & Ice Cream. Without waiting for the government to solicit his services, a fierce, black-bearded giant named Shaban Jafari cruised the polling places through the week with his ragged associates--the Society of Gallant Men--to flex his muscles on behalf of Zahedi candidates. Tough, rough Shaban, who is called the "Brainless One," came out of Teheran's slums, was once Iran's national wrestling champion. In the past he put his brawn to work for Mohammed Mossadegh, and in his behalf used to sack opposition newspaper offices. Now professing loyalty to Zahedi, the man who threw out Mossadegh, Brainless led his knife-armed toughs on tours of the polling places. Systematically, Brainless pulled voters out of line, searched their pockets for an anti-government ballot. When he found one, the voter was cuffed or stabbed, then turned over to the nearest policeman to be arrested and carted off to jail. Occasionally Shaban sheared off the hair of the victim.

At the end of one busy day Shaban eased his bulk into a cafe chair and poked at a dish of ice cream. His score for two days was 50 hospitalized, "mostly Communists." "We did better than the police and the soldiers together," Brainless boasted. "I know Shaban is a little rough," said Ardashir Zahedi, U.S.-educated son of the Premier, "but . . . he is against the Communists."

Votes & Oil. As in Teheran, elections were going on ail over Iran. Though crude and undemocratic by Western standards, the balloting process fits the pattern for Iran, which is backward, deeply infiltrated by a Communist underground and inexperienced at combating the enemies of democracy with democratic methods. The current elections were efficient and peaceful by contrast; in Mohammed Mossadegh's 1952 elections, the balloting lasted five months and at least 50 were killed.

The formalities in the Teheran mosque gave the government more than the quorum of Deputies needed to summon the Majlis into session--the first since it was dissolved by would-be Dictator Mossadegh in August 1953. Desperate to get Iran's major resource, oil, into world markets after 30 months of near-bankruptcy, Premier Zahedi let it be known that the parliament's first big assignment will be to ratify a new oil agreement with Western companies.

One morning last week, an officer pounded on the door of a house in suburban Teheran. To the full-bearded, pajama-clad man who answered, he said: "Your time is up. Get ready to move." The man in hiding was Hussein Fatemi, the hated and long sought No. 2 man and Foreign Minister in the Mossadegh regime. Fatemi had been variously reported as torn to pieces by the Teheran mobs last August, or in hiding in Cairo, Berlin, the Iranian hills. Fatemi was hauled off to jail, but on the way he was stabbed superficially by someone in a howling street mob. The government reported Fatemi would stand trial for treason against the Shah.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.