Round
12 for Iran's Reformists
Kaveh Ehsani
(Kaveh
Ehsani, an Iranian writer based in Chicago, serves on the editorial
committee of Middle East Report.)
January 29,
2004
When, in
mid-January 2004, the Council of Guardians rejected the applications
of 3,600 out of nearly 8,200 people seeking candidacy in Iran's
upcoming parliamentary elections, there was scant surprise in
the country. President Mohammad Khatami, members of his government
and sitting parliamentary deputies professed to be "shocked"
by the number of disqualifications for the February 20 contests,
but in fact the Council members and their conservative allies
had long been hinting at their aim to purge the legislature, the
press and, eventually, the government, of political rivals belonging
to the diverse currents lumped together under the rubric of "the
reformists."
With the
wholesale disqualifications, the conservative clerics hope to
seat a docile parliament (Majles) which will open the way to unification
of Iran's fractured political system under a conservative monopoly
after Khatami steps down from the presidency in 2005. By blocking
the candidacy of leading reformists, including current members
of the Majles, as well as independents and unknown aspirants,
the Guardian Council is placing the conservative forces in what
they perceive as a win-win situation.
"SILENT
COUP D'ÉTAT"
Fully anticipating
vocal protests from the reformist elements, the Council -- a body
of 12 unelected clerics vested with the power to overturn acts
of parliament -- has been ready from the outset to make some compromises.
Since January 11, members of the Participation Front, the main
bloc of reformist deputies, have led a sit-in in the Majles building,
vowing: "We will resist this silent coup d'état, and stand
our ground until illegally disqualified candidates are reinstated
and fair elections are held." For their part, Khatami and
the reformist speaker of the Majles, Mehdi Karrubi, issued a joint
statement demanding a "full review" of the candidate
screening. Even Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, successor to Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini as Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution,
has requested that the Council reconsider its decisions. So far
the Council has rescinded some 350 of the disqualifications, with
Khatami claiming that an additional 150 applicants will be reinstated
as a result of consultations between him, Karrubi and the Council.
But the Guardians calculate that these meager compromises, while
probably not redounding to their own credit, will still embarrass
their political opponents before the Iranian public.
If prominent
reformers accept their own disqualification, in exchange for the
reinstatement of lesser known candidates, the next Majles will
lack the leadership that can impose a common agenda on the reformist
factions, no matter how large a majority they command. If, on
the other hand, the prominent reformist figures are approved to
run in the elections, while a significant number of unknowns remain
disqualified, growing public distrust of the reformists' true
distance from arbitrary power will be confirmed.
Such distrust
has already led to decreased voter turnout, in the local council
elections of late February 2003; should the skepticism intensify
and again depress participation rates, the conservatives could
look forward to electoral victory. If the reformers opt to persist
in contesting the disqualification, but eventually concede the
battle, then the Guardian Council has ensured that conservative
forces will gain an absolute majority in the next Majles. Their
potential rivals for 180 of the 290 seats that are up for grabs
currently languish on the list of the disqualified. Of this list,
58 percent hail from the reformist factions, and 30 percent are
independents.
CLOGGING
THE ARTERIES
Since Khatami
first won the presidency in 1997, the conservatives in Iran have
resented their successive electoral defeats at the hands of their
reformist opponents. Reeling from humiliation, the conservatives
began a systematic offensive against the main components of the
reformist movement: the independent press, the student movement
and political dissidents, and the reformist front in Parliament.
In the past four years, more than 100 independent publications
have been banned, and many editors, publishers, writers and translators
have been persecuted. Intellectuals, lawyers, academics, pollsters
and social scientists have been jailed and mistreated, while student
protests against these repressive measures have themselves been
violently put down. Hardline conservatives have also moved to
neutralize the current Majles. The Guardian Council has used its
veto power to reject 111 of 295 mostly progressive pieces of legislation
passed by the Majles, making the parliamentarians look like useless
chatterboxes. In the last few months, the Guardians have reportedly
employed 200,000 agents throughout the country to turn up supposedly
incriminating evidence against potential candidates. Five times
as many people were eventually blocked from running as in the
last parliamentary election in 2000.
The conservatives
have been willing to pay a heavy price for imposing deadlock on
the political system. For the past 25 years, the regime had prided
itself on high voter turnout in regularly held elections. Indeed,
election patterns in Iran have remained fairly constant since
1988-1989, years which saw the end of the Iran-Iraq war and the
death of Khomeini. Despite the systematic vetting of applicants
-- which limits the slate of candidates to those deemed sufficiently
loyal to the regime -- the majority of votes in every election
have been cast for candidates who represent the possibility of
opening up the Iranian system. During the tenure of former President
Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani in the 1990s, such candidates spoke
primarily of modest openings in the heavily nationalized economic
sphere after the austerity of the war years. Rafsanjani dealt
rather ruthlessly with suggestions of a simultaneous political
opening. But beginning with Khatami's election, calls for fundamental
political reform have gained ground. These calls have threatened
the entrenched clerical establishment, though the reformists sitting
in Parliament still back the principle that Iran should be an
Islamic state.
The elections
of the past seven years have demonstrated that the conservative
establishment has a committed base representing 7-12 percent of
the 46 million eligible voters. Reformers, on the other hand,
have enjoyed the support of as much as 75 percent of the electorate,
but have failed to translate the votes into institutionalized
political power. As a result, Western journalists repeatedly write,
and many Iranian citizens believe, that "real power"
in the Islamic Republic lies with the conservatives. This is a
misleading formulation. Despite their considerable coercive apparatus
and economic resources, the power of conservatives is primarily
negative: what they can do best is clog the system's arteries.
Lacking an effective, organized popular base, the reformers have
focused their efforts on proving their credentials through good
governance, but many of these efforts has been frustrated by conservative
vetoes, as well as corruption and, sometimes, sheer incompetence.
NAILS IN
THE COFFIN
The greatest
weakness of Iran's Islamist reformers has been their deep-set
distrust of popular social movements -- the spontaneous gatherings
and independent institutions which they cannot control. They are
generally reluctant to work openly with other reformers outside
the regime, especially the secular forces, for fear of violent
backlash from the conservatives. This shortcoming has contributed
to the increasing loss of faith in the reformers among the Iranian
public, and limited their ability to expand their base.
Asked by
a journalist why the reformers have failed to firm up a base in
political parties and labor unions, Behzad Nabavi, deputy speaker
of the Majles, replied that, in his opinion, popular support should
be limited to people showing up regularly to cast their votes.
Another leading reformer, Abbas Abdi, who has been in prison since
February 2003 for carrying out polls showing that ordinary Iranians
want warmer relations with the West, was asked why the reformers
did not consistently defend the student protesters who were physically
assaulted by hard-right vigilantes during the Tehran University
demonstrations of July 1999. Abdi replied that, at some point,
the reformers determined that the protesting students were no
longer following their leaders. Unable to dictate the slogans
and behavior of the protesters, the reformers felt it was too
dangerous for them to continue backing a movement which, ultimately,
might not be of benefit to their cause. Fears of chaos, bloody
crackdowns and foreign intervention have played an important part
in this debilitating timidity, but the students and many other
Iranians who had invested hopes in the reformists have been bitterly
disappointed.
The Participation
Front hammered another nail in the coffin of its credibility with
these Iranians in October 2003, with the final communiqué of its
much anticipated party congress. The opening speech at the congress
had directly criticized the Leader, Khamenei, and proclaimed that
every form of power -- including velayat-e faqih (rule of the
clerics) -- had to be limited by law. This bold introduction raised
some hope that the reformers might finally attempt to mobilize
the public behind a set of concrete demands for structural change.
But in the final communiqué, the party announced that it would
not espouse civil disobedience, or any other peaceful means of
protest, but would go on negotiating within the regime for "a
democratic interpretation of the constitution."
Popular disenchantment
with these failed formal channels for achieving change became
obvious in the presidential elections of 2001, when almost a third
of the electorate (14 million people) did not vote. By the local
elections of 2003, the number of abstentions had increased to
28 million. Only a "miracle" could now produce widespread
participation in the February 20 balloting, said Saeed Hajjarian,
a key reformist leader, in December 2003. Low turnout suits the
conservatives just fine, as they can count on their solid 12 percent.
Just before
the Guardian Council announced the disqualifications, the main
student organization released a statement titled "Not Participating
in the Elections May Well Be a Better Solution." The student
movement has been burned one too many times by violent repression,
as well as the inability of the reformers to protect them, said
the statement. "Unless elections lead to systematic and fundamental
change they will only legitimize autocracy," it continued.
"The constitution of the Islamic Republic in its present
form, with institutions such as the Guardian Council, the Expediency
Council and [the office of] the Leader leaves no further room
for democratization." The student communiqué urged the reformers
to leave positions of power and begin organizing to force change
upon the system from below.
CAN THEY
STAND THEIR GROUND?
Ironically,
the hubris displayed by the mass disqualifications has reinjected
life into Iranian politics. Coming in the wake of the disastrous
Bam earthquake which killed perhaps 41,000 people and unified
the population in deep national grief, the behavior of the Guardian
Council showed the conservatives to be completely out of touch
with the popular mood. For their part, the reformers have realized
that their political lives will effectively end on February 20.
If the bell has rung for the twelfth round of the boxing match,
they have no option but to go for a knockout.
To the clamor
for his resignation from provincial governors and ministers, Khatami
replied: "We will stay together or leave together."
He has encouraged the striking Majles deputies to continue their
sit-in as long as candidates are being screened out of the upcoming
polling on spurious grounds. Eighty percent of the current disqualifications
are based on judgments that the aspirant in question does not
believe in Islam or in the constitution of the Islamic Republic
-- rather than on such criteria as citizenship, residency, age,
fraud or criminal record.
Until now,
the reformers have presented elections as an end in themselves.
Questioned about the conservative victory in the local elections
in 2003, Nabavi answered, "What victory? These elections
showed that [the conservatives] win only if the people don't participate.
Victory in a cemetery is not a victory at all! Our aim is to limit
power and make it act in legal and accountable ways." But
Iranians have been asking why they should return a reformist majority
to the Majles if the deputies are unable to deliver on their campaign
platform. To answer their constituents' concerns, the reformers
are forced to consider such sweeping measures as demanding changes
in the composition of the Guardian Council and the judiciary.
If all else fails, the reformists can obstruct the elections by
urging people to cast blank ballots, or ultimately, by leaving
the government to become the opposition.
The president
and the Ministry of Interior could also choose to include the
names of wrongly disqualified candidates on the ballots. On January
29, the minister of interior encouraged "all those who have
been disqualified without any document" to resume their campaigns
as if they will be allowed to run. But Iranian voters will watch
to see whether the reformers, including the striking Majles deputies,
do indeed stand their ground and insist on reinstatement of all
the illegally barred candidates. Iranians have not forgotten that
it was a sit-in at Parliament that marked the beginning of Iran's
Constitutional Revolution (1906-1911). If the reformers are seen
to be compromising yet again in order to keep their foot in the
door of government, they will lose all credibility with the public.
If, on the other hand, they maintain a unified challenge to the
authority of the Guardian Council, they may be able to galvanize
public interest and demonstrate that the conservatives are weaker
than they claim. This strategy of confrontation has its risks,
but every day that the reformers hold their ground, they regain
some of their former popular support. Public opinion will not
allow them to back down, and still retain their present role in
Iranian politics.
