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Al-Ahram Weekly 31 August - 6 September 2000 Issue No. 497 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 31 August - 6 September 2000 Issue No. 497
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Backs to the wall
By Azadeh MoaveniTaking stock of the seeming irrelevance of their parliamentary victory, Iran's reformists last week confronted the full gravity of their political weakness. Their grim, routine expressions of optimism rang particularly hollow as street unrest broke out in a city in west Iran, and the euphoria of the reformist take-over of parliament was replaced by disillusionment.
In a gesture of petty intolerance reminiscent of the early days of the reform movement, hard-line-backed militants in the western city of Khorramabad prevented prominent moderates Abdolkarim Soroush and Mohsen Kadivar from speaking at a student gathering. The attempt to block the meeting provoked widespread disturbances that left one police officer dead and the city under the control of state security forces. Approximately 10,000 people demonstrated, according to eyewitness accounts.
The Office to Consolidate Unity is Iran's largest organised student group and its leaders and activities have played a significant role in the reform movement, providing the "pressure from below" that reformists use as a counterweight against their conservative opponents in the establishment.
That the power struggle will flow onto the streets has always been the reformists' greatest fear; when the conflict turns physical, they have everything to lose and nothing to gain. Public support plummets, people die and the reform movement's institutional irrelevance is revealed in tragic splendour. Impatient students and the hard-liners are satisfied while the moderate reformist opposition within the state looks and behaves increasingly mute.
But with the independent press closed, the parliament occupied perforce with secondary reforms, and because universities are about to reopen, more of the same appears in store.
The clashes come at what is a nadir in the reform movement's efforts to transform their popular support into institutional power. Pro-reform representatives in parliament have sought to convince their hard-line rivals that unless the regime moderates its aggressive disregard of the rule of law, the establishment as a whole -- including conservatives and reformists -- will be seriously undermined. MP Ali Shakkuri-Rad warned as much. "If the system is incapable of safeguarding the security of a lawful gathering, then it has contradicted its own existence," Shakkuri-Rad told the official news agency.
The Islamic Iran Participation Front, the reformist faction closest to President Mohamed Khatami, urged calm, but also showed itself unable to defuse the sort of situation that could be its political ruin. Convinced they can remould their Islamic Republic only with the gentlest of touches, reformists have been content to press ahead with little gain -- so long as they are not rolled back. Their strategists have hoped that a steely resolve to resist provocation by the hard-liners will buy them time to institutionalise their gains slowly.
But last week's unrest suggests that the hard-line establishment, which encompasses corrupt politicians and the ideologically conservative alike, is unwilling to countenance any serious inroads by the reformist camp, however slender the progress and however cautious the approach.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei consolidated the hard-line muscle-flexing with his interference in the legislative process of the new, reform-dominated parliament in early August by standing against a new press law submitted by reformists. In the space of a few weeks, the reform movement has seen the last of its prominent activists thrown in jail and the last of its publications shut down. Sources close to reformist MPs said they are shocked by the force of the conservative backlash.
With the hard-line keen to freshly intimidate its political rivals and ordinary Iranians alike, the political atmosphere in Tehran is tense. Intelligence Minster Ali Yunesi reminded the nation that his ministry relies on the help of "thousands of informers," in what seemed an oblique warning to the public at large. Meanwhile, Khatami, in his first public interview since his 1997 electoral victory, admitted to state radio that he lacked the power to implement the constitution.
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