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Al-Ahram Weekly 17 - 23 February 2000 Issue No. 469 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 17 - 23 February 2000 Issue No. 469
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Focus Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters A question of margins
By Azadeh Moaveni
On the surface, the run-up to Iran's parliamentary election has been startlingly mundane -- the relentless campaigning, personal attacks, and popular faith in the indeterminacy of the outcome bespeak an evolved political culture rather than a theocracy's first, awkward lurch toward democracy. But the personalities dominating this week's campaign would puzzle any observer seeking out the conventional indicators of a parliamentary election. Instead of key candidates, disqualified reformists occupied the attention of the public and the media, turning their criticism of the electoral process into the relevant issue of the moment.
While the blacklisted reformists savoured their coming into the limelight at the hands of the conservative Guardians Council, which had barred their participation, their prominence revealed why the significance of this election lies not in its outcome, but in its contours. The likelihood that former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani will be elected speaker, makes winning a parliamentary majority only a modest gain in a larger fight on different fronts. What does matter is the preoccupation with the fairness of the process, those it left out, and the fresh sense that accountability is no longer a matter of whim in Iranian politics.
At a 11 February youth rally for the Iran Islamic Participation Front (IIPF), the faction tied to the president, disqualified reformist hopefuls Hamidreza Jaleipour and Abbas Abdi attracted twice the crowd that turned out for a similar event just days before. The crowd chanted "Nouri and Kadivar must be freed", in reference to liberal clerics imprisoned in recent months by a controversial special clerical court. Even the president's brother, Reza Khatami, who heads the IIPF's list in Tehran, admitted that when travelling about the country what he was asked about most frequently was the fate of Abdollah Nouri.
Two of the best-known candidates on the reform ticket are related to these two clerics -- Jamileh Kadivar, sister of Mohsen Kadivar, and Alireza Nouri, Abdollah Nouri's brother. Their surnames are a constant and less than subtle reminder of who the sixth parliament could have, and by most popular accounts should have, included.
The Guardians Council said it had been forced to bar certain candidates because of "insufficient documentation" of their commitment to Islam. But, as Jaleipour said in a reformist daily, "If two years of service in the war and the martyrdom of three of my brothers in the war does not exhibit sufficient commitment to Islam, then what does?"
Since the waning appeal of conservative candidates precluded the possibility of gaining more supporters, the council's surgical-like use of its screening powers accomplished its intention -- eroding the reformists sizable advantage. Reformists responded by turning their campaign into a criticism of the process. "It's the game itself that's important, and we don't want to play a game where one team always wins," said Akbar Ganji, a reformist who now focuses on undermining Rafsanjani's official stature. Ganji has demanded that the former president answer for the worst excesses of his tenure, namely the murder of liberal writers and the unnecessary prolongation of the Iran-Iraq War.
Conventional wisdom holds that the screening process was premised on an 'outsider-insider' distinction, which excluded all candidates on the extreme left, both from within the Khatami coalition and the secular-nationalist opposition. "Anyone who is chosen through this 'democratic' process is an insider," said Alireza Nouri, echoing the reformists' rhetoric of outrage that prompted the president to apologise to those who "felt their rights may have been weakened [by this process]".
Prudence demanded that the conservatives scramble back to less-threatening ground, hence Rafsanjani's abandonment of his influential post at the head of the clerical Expediency Council, to bother again with the parliament. His party, the Executives of Construction, was firmly established in the umbrella coalition of 18 reformist groups. Despite ideological harmony on most issues in the coalition's platform, Rafsanjani's presence is seriously unacceptable to the major reformist front, the IIPF. Conflict is no longer just a possibility, and the prospect is altogether heartening for conservatives.
The president's task has been to build this coalition, Rafsanjani's to undermine it. Some suggest this has only been at the behest of the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and Rafsanjani has revived nagging doubts that the reformists' margin will be slight enough -- 60 to 40 -- to leave the parliament a deadlock. Whoever wins the top vote in Tehran, according to Tehran University professor Hadi Semati, will emerge as a major political figure. Leaving the margin aside, the parliament may very well become a contest between personalities.
Rafsanjani's strongest card is that his administration never witnessed social unrest approximating this summer's riots under Khatami. His daughter Faezeh, also a candidate, has emphasised the stability that prevailed while her father was president -- claiming Rafsanjani's inclusion of the left accounted for that era's contentment. Despite the determined spin that he will be a productive force through his ties to both factions, reformists -- from young Khatami supporters to his senior advisers -- will be hard-pressed to conceive of an old establishment figure as a progressive new force.
The problems Rafsanjani as speaker may inevitably pose to Khatami's reform agenda are a compelling reason to suppose that grand expectations are inappropriate for this particular election. But an atmosphere where the body politic believes free elections can be held is a lasting achievement. "What we are seeing is less ideology and more politics," said Semati. "The republican part of the Islamic Republic is getting stronger."
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