Transitions to democracy and free market economies require patience and persistence.

From Karkheh to Rhine...By Majid Entezami
"Transitions to democracy and free market economies require patience and persistence. In the United States, we became a newly independent state in 1776 and for the past 222 years, our democracy has been a work in progress. It took us more than 10 years to draft a constitution, 89 years to rid our nation of slavery, 144 years to give our women the vote and 188 years to make all our citizens equal under the law. Democracy does not end with a constitution and the right to vote. It is a never-ending struggle that we must grapple with every day."
[Hillary Rodham Clinton, Senator and wife of former U.S. President Bill Clinton, speaking in Ukraine in November 1997 on her tour to some of the former Soviet Republics-Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Russia and Ukraine.]
We, iranian people, have a long history of monarchy and kingdom [which some of us love it very much and are proud of it!]. Authoritarianism is now in our blood, hard to get rid of. We may reflect some selfish behaviors which may don't seem much of a bad thing for us. It may become a very common experience to hear someone call an iranian [opposition] radio or TV discussing about democracy, speaking after all people and calling for "The Great Shah" to bring back democracy to our country!!!!
About one hundred years ago we had a sad-ending effort to achieve freedom and democracy. Azerbaijani generals, "Sattar khan" and "Bagher khan", were among our National heros fighted for freedom. Sattar Khan, who was heading the rebels from Ayirsiz district of Tabriz, capital of Eastern Azarbaijan province, in 1907, had become favourite general of all his fighters because of his heroism and courage. After Board Assembly shooting incident, 40 thousand armed forces of Shah attacked Tabriz, the cradle of Constitutional Revolution. High Military Council was established under the leadership of Sattar khan in June 1908. By April 1909, Tabriz rebels lost huge number of their fighters in driving out the armed forces of the enemy from Tabriz. Taking into account Sattar Khan and Bagher Khan's heroism at this fight, Sattar Khan was honoured by the title of "Sardar-e Melli" (National General) and Bagir khan "Salar-e Melli" (National Leader) by the order of the Assembly... Many freedom-seeking fights occured that year and ... afterall Constitutional Revoloution had an unhappy-ending in Iran. Democracy story in Iran is a very sad but instructive story. As I quoted at the first of this post, democracy needs time, patience and persistence specially for a nation like us whose fights for democracy are two lines out of a huge monarchic-tyrannic history book. It is time-consuming process but we should be patient and consistent in this way.