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Al-Ahram Weekly 20 - 26 January 2000 Issue No. 465 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 20 - 26 January 2000 Issue No. 465
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Divine elect
By Azadeh Moaveni
Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazzi declared during his recent and largely symbolic trip to Britain that reformist candidates were not being systematically excluded from February's parliamentary election ballot. Just days later, the Guardian Council (a conservative body of clerics and legal experts supervising the elections) disqualified 758 candidates, 90 of them belonging to the 290-strong pro-reform coalition, on the nebulous grounds of "lack of commitment to Islam, the Islamic establishment, and the Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei]."
Hardly auspicious for Kharazzi's credibility, and less so for the Council's, which admitted the possibility of misjudgment two days later and asked those blacklisted to file for reconsideration. But with 6,800 candidates and multiple rounds of screenings by the Council itself, as well as the independent screenings by various other state bodies, reviewing the rejected candidacies will be neither simple nor quick. Liberals hold little hope that the process will be concluded by the 9 February deadline for the final electoral slate.
An unexpected and rare public statement by liberal cleric Ayatollah Ali Montazeri, made to The Guardian and Reuters news agency, considerably heightened the political tension surrounding the elections. Montazeri said that monopolistic tendencies in politics erode popular support for the revolution, singling out the Supreme Leader himself. "He [Khamenei] can never be above the law ... and since [he] is not infallible, he should naturally remain open to public criticism," Montazeri said. That the one-time heir to Ayatollah Khomeini himself should publicly blame the conservative clergy for election fixing is exactly the sort of explosive cooperation between the architects of reform -- theologians, philosophers, politicians -- that conservatives have feared.
Reformists see electoral deliberations as designed to disguise the fact that the Council is throwing its weight behind a new conservative coalition, headed by former president Hashemi Rafsanjani. In particular, doubters point to the range of subjects the new coalition is addressing -- unemployment, inflation, education. Mohamed-Reza Bahonar, spokesman for the new alliance, told Reuters, "The people are not interested in political disputes." This aggressively populist platform, reformists suggest, seeks to paint President Mohamed Khatami's allies as overly concerned with political and cultural rights, to the detriment of social and economic concerns.
The coalition's pragmatic ambitions give political observers in the Islamic Republic a sense of déjà vu. It was under Rafsanjani's presidency that the economic reforms of the early nineties failed to deliver anything close to what had been promised. Indeed, much of what has transformed many of yesterday's Islamic revolutionaries into today's reformists is the conviction that without political liberalism, economic renewal will remain illusory. Rafsanjani's reemergence recalls murmurs suggesting the election that swept Khatami into office was free only at the ex-president's bidding. It was argued at the time that with Khatami at the helm, rather than his conservative rival Ali Akbar Nateq-Nouri, Rafsanjani would remain relevant in the absence of a second conservative pole in the establishment.
Khatami (l) with members of Iran's Assembly of Experts during their meeting this week in Tehran (photo: AP)
Whether Rafsanjani as parliamentary speaker would shore up the conservative position or mediate factional strife is not immediately clear. Observers are quick to note that he has always been useful in balancing the vested interests of both reformists and conservatives, neither of whom stand to gain by a serious dislodging of the establishment.
In Iran's political system, with its absence of political parties, the jelling of a conservative coalition (with the scarcely coincidental name "Followers of the Path of the Imam and the Leader"), means that liberals now face not only the ballot vetting process itself, but an organised front of opponents. Despite alarm bells in the press, prominent reformists have confessed that the disqualifications could have been far worse. But with the powers that be -- chiefly the Council, under the influence of Khamenei -- using their position to scupper their most popular opponents, and with the emergence of a new coalition these same powers would clearly prefer dealing with, Iran's reformists do not seem destined for political triumph. Further, feel many observers, there is no guarantee votes will be counted fairly or an election held at all if the results seem likely to be unfavourable for the conservative political establishment.
What does all this mean for the reform movement? According to most analysts, there is little cause for optimism. In most countries with fettered elections, there is a parallel absence of a viable, intra-establishment push for change. Iran's fledgling liberals have no constitutional checks and balances to lean on, and their president is increasingly burdened by the weight of his public's expectations. The extent of their desire for change is only matched by Khatami's inability to exact any.
President Khatami has also chimed in on the importance of freedom of choice in a recent statement to the Iranian News Agency. "If the people believe they have greater power to choose," he said, "they will turn out in larger numbers and this will increase the state's security and authority."
