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Harsh poll lesson for Iran's
reformists
By N Janardhan
DUBAI - The defeat of the reformist camp in
Iran's recent local elections is bound to intensify its
struggle with the conservatives, but it also shows
rising impatience for a faster, deeper pace of changes
in this Islamic republic.
In the February 28
elections, hardliners opposed to President Mohammad
Khatami's reforms claimed 14 of 15 possible seats on the
Tehran City Council, a benchmark for the rest of the
country and which had been which was dissolved late last
year after political squabbling among its members.
Overall, polls were held for 905 city councils and
34,205 village councils, with conservatives sweeping
seats in all major cities.
According to the
interior ministry, just 49 percent of Iran's 41.2
million registered voters exercised their franchise. The
big cities, where the reformists bear more influence,
recorded a poor 15 percent turnout. In contrast,
reformists swept Iran's first local polls in 1999.
The reform era was ushered in by Khatami's
victory in 1997, followed by the victories of his
followers in two successive polls, and Khatami's own
reelection in 2001. The conservative daily Kayhan called
the election result a "resounding victory of the
fundamentalists" and said that Iranians had "turned
their back on the reformists".
Analysts said
that the low turnout was a crucial factor in the
outcome. This, in turn, reflected growing public anger
at the sluggish pace of reforms since Khatami was
elected and the infighting within the reformist camp.
Said political analyst A K Pasha, "The results are not
an indication of a retreat from democracy, but a warning
that the public is frustrated by the factional feuds of
recent years," said Pasha, who was in Tehran as an
election observer.
"It is a sign of
disappointment due to the failure of the politicians to
effect the democratic reforms and economic improvements
they had promised," said Pasha, director of the Gulf
Studies Program at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in
New Delhi, India.
Khatami's policies have been
most successful in the social sphere in Iran, where
couples in parks now hold hands, women stroll freely
with makeup and fashionable headscarves showing their
hair. But he has so far failed on the economic front.
Government plans to create jobs and overcome poverty,
which affects one-third of the country's 65.6 million
people, are blocked or delayed. The same goes for plans
to diversify the economy, which is almost wholly
dependent on oil.
Officially, 13 percent of the
population is out of work, but some say that the real
figure is bigger. Inflation, too, is put at 13 percent,
but could be as high as 20 percent Over the years,
Khatami and his allies have struggled with conservatives
on issues such as more liberal laws to more media
freedom. They have also sought to normalize ties with
the West, the conservatives oppose this. Pasha said,
"The conservatives won not as a result of the people's
endorsement of their ideology. Rather, it was a result
of the reformists' failure to mobilize the electorate,
who stayed away because of the disenchantment with the
pace of reforms."
But reforms are by no means
easy, despite the support Khatami has among groups like
the youth. Khatami is looking to achieve changes at a
pace that will not upset the constitutionally stronger
conservatives. Were he to adhere to a populist agenda,
he fears a revolution and civil war.
The
election results also come amid concern about
developments across the border in Iraq. Some believe
that the conservatives' hardline opposition to US plans
to attacks Iraq is more dignified than the conciliatory
and rapprochement gestures shown by the reformists.
Conservatives say that Iran should fight any US
attack on its neighbor, not simply because it is a
fellow Muslim country, but because Iraq, like Iran, has
a Shi'ite majority, though Iraq is ruled by Sunnis.
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a conservative and who
as president kept Iran neutral in the 1990-91 Gulf
conflict, has compared a US strike on Iraq to having "a
python tackle a scorpion". Reformers prefer tacit
cooperation.
Officially, Tehran opposes any war,
advising Iraq to obey UN resolutions on disarmament. But
Khatami accuses the US for "fanning extremism and
undermining moderate, democratic trends in the Islamic
world".
Khatami warned his conservative foes
against reveling in their poll victory, saying that the
poor poll turnout by the reformist supporters threatens
the entire system. He said that if Iran becomes a
dictatorship like Iraq, without any popular mandate, the
Islamic government's opponents would move to overthrow
it, just as they are now doing to Saddam Hussein.
"People become disillusioned when they get the
impression that the policies of the leaders they have
installed does not correspond with their expectations
and they end up turning their backs on the whole
system," he told the Iran News Agency. "My worry is that
disillusioned people will make do with a dictatorship
like Saddam's, which will eventually be overthrown by
foreigners when they've finished with him," Khatami
added.
Reformists have about 200 seats in a
290-member parliament. But as supreme leader, Ayatollah
Khamenei, the leader of the conservatives, holds real
power in Iran and commands the armed forces and the
Council of Guardians, the elite body of clerics that
approves legislation.
Meantime, the poll has
laid out the work ahead for reformists. The main
reformist party, Islamic Iran Participation Front, said
that it is not planning to toughen its approach toward
the conservatives. Instead, "Our energies will be
focused on bringing the people back to the polling
booths. If we succeed in that, we can be assured of
victory," party spokesman Mustafa Tajzadeh was quoted as
saying in Dubai's Gulf News newspaper this week.
Inad Khairallah of the Dar Al Khaleej Research
Center said that the results remain a boost to democracy
because it shows that Iranian society is looking for new
political entities and representation - "not for a
recycling of old figures and parties".
"This
phenomenon will almost certainly repeat itself in the
2004 parliamentary elections, leading to the emergence
of a number of new parties and an attempt by each of the
main parties to establish their own identity and appeal
to voters," he added.
(Inter Press
Service)
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