Kamangir (Archer)

Ahmadinejad, the Populist

Kamangir | April 20, 2007 | Category Iran

One of the arguments of Ahmadinejadists for his popularity is the hundreds of thousands of letters people give him in his provincial trips (background). These letters are mainly about people’s personal problem with a bank they have taken a loan from or with an employer who has fired their son. While the fact that people have to resort to complaining to the President shows how much functional the administration’s connection to the people is, Labirent recently shed more light on what happened to the letters in one trip.

After Ahmadinejad received couple of bags of letters in his trip to Bouyer Ahmad Province, one of the most poverty-striken areas in Iran, the writer of each letter was sent the equivalent of $50. Knowing that this happens in places where families live on $100 for a month, it is obvious how many more letters he will get in his next trip. The conduct of the event was as shown in the pictures; the names of writers were listed in papers, the number of which Azadeh and I estimated to be a hundred. If each sheet contains 20 names, that would be 2,000 names, making a $100,000-show for Ahmadinejad. Given how much Ahmadinejad will benefit from the propaganda, this was amongst the cheapest populist moves of his administration. All pictures are from Labirent.