RIGHTS-IRAN: Hardliners Face Election Rout

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Analysis - Dilip Hiro

LONDON, Mar 3 1999 (IPS) - Moderate candidates were headed for a landslide victory in Iran’s first free municipal elections Wednesday boosting the attempt by reformist President Mohammed Khatami to extend the framework of democracy.

As counting continued after Friday’s voting, reformers were leading in all 15 seats for the Teheran city council and in most other races across the country.

The outcome of the local government elections, the first since the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979, provided a solid endorsement of Khatami’s efforts to ease the social, cultural and political restrictions imposed by the hardliners in Iran’s clerical government. .

There was another unique feature of the Friday poll, Whereas vetting for the candidates for the president, parliament, or Assembly of Experts (which elects the Supreme Leader), is stringent, and is conducted by the high-powered Council of the Guardians (of the Constitution), vetting for municipal candidates was done by a lesser body, the Election Supervisory Board (ESB), appointed by parliament.

As a result there was a dramatic rise in candidates, especially in big cities. In Teheran, for instance, there were 1,400 hopefuls for the 15-member local Islamic Council.

Overall there were 330,000 candidates, including 5,000 women, for 200,000 Council seats to run local government in the cities, towns and villages of Iran. So, almost overnight, the latest poll engendered a vast body of politicians with varied backgrounds and viewpoints.

They ranged from mullahs and hardline Islamic ideologues to professionals with Western training and former aristocrats.

The lively election campaign saw candidates holding rallies, and plastering cars and city walls with fliers and posters. They published a variety of manifestos, and debated such issues as pollution, male-female relationship, and various freedoms. The media gave extensive coverage to the electoral campaign, thus heightening popular interest.

Of the nearly 40 million Iranians above 15 eligible to vote, more than 24 million did so. At 63 per cent, the voter participation in Iran was higher than the usual turnout in U.S. presidential elections which averages about 50 percent.

After casting his ballot in Teheran, President Khatami said, “The elections are the greatest symbol of participation and political reform as they ensure that the people know their rights in shaping their destiny. They are also a giant step toward decentralisation which is a goal of the new government.”

The ‘new government’, headed by Khatami, came to office in August 1997 after he won a landslide victory in the presidential poll.

It succeeded the administration headed by Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was twice elected president for a four-year term, starting 1989 – soon after the death of the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

But, although regarded a moderate, Rafsanjani did not implement the Islamic Council Law that the parliament had passed three years earlier. He focused on the urgent task of liberalising the economy which, due to the eight year war with Iraq in the 1980s, had become centralised, with a large, inefficiently-run public sector.

In contrast, one of the leading promises that Khatami made during his election campaign was that he would help engender a ‘civil society’ in Iran in accordance with the 1979 constitution.

The Iranian constitution provided for Councils at different levels.

“In order to further social, economic, development, public health, cultural and educational programmes as well as other welfare measures through popular cooperation, and in keeping with local circumstances for administering these affairs,” says Article 100 of the constitution.

“Every rural area, county, township and province will elect members of the Councils for the village, county, township or province.”

It was this constitutional provision that the parliament later expanded into a fully-fledged Islamic Council Law. But since this legislation had remained unimplemented for many years, it could have been left untouched by the latest president, Khatami. What made him implement this law?

“President Khatami has his hand firmly on the nation’s pulse,” says Prof. Hooshang Amirahmadi, president of the American-Iranian Council. “People want to be much more open-minded and democratic, and Khatami is reflecting that mood.”

There is no contradiction between that and the Iranian constitution, which states that: power rests with the people. In Article 7 that concept is attributed to the Koranic verses, “Their affairs are by consultation among them’, and ‘Consult them (the believers) on affairs.”

So, while Western democracy derives its inspiration from the practices of ancient Greek city-states, Islamic democracy does so from the Koran. Nevertheless, there are important parallels between Western and Islamic models of democracy.

For instance, the Iranian constitution stipulates separation of the executive, legislative and judicial organs of the state.

Where Iran’s basic law diverges from its Western counterparts is in the creation of the office of the Supreme Leader, who is the final arbiter of power, and who is chosen by the popularly elected Assembly of Experts, who are invariably clerics.

Whereas presidency or membership of parliament is open to a lay person this is not the case with membership of the Assembly of Experts. It is this constitutional provision that illustrates the adjective ‘Islamic’ in the official title of the country: Islamic Republic of Iran, and sets it apart from secular republics..

Since the revolution in Iran 20 years ago, there have been 18 referendums and elections for the parliament, president and Assembly of Experts. Even during the 1980-88 war with Iraq, the authorities in Iran held elections on time.

Although for the better part of the past two decades there have been no recognised political parties in Iran, voters always had a multiple choice in elections.

Lack of organized parties has been another feature of Iran’s Islamic democracy that is at odds with its Western counterpart but the absence of parties has not meant absence of differences on policies – social, political, economic.

These exist, and are broadly termed hardline/conservative and moderate/reformist. In the last presidential contest, reformist Khatami, a cleric, was opposed by Ali Akbar Nateq-Nouri, a conservative mullah favoured by the religious establishment.

In Friday’s local elections there was also an absence of recognised parties but in big cities, like-minded politicians put together a common list under an attractive slogan..

For example, in Teheran reformist Abdullah Nouri, a former interior minister and a close ally of President Khatami, headed a list of candidates bearing the title, ‘Islam of love’. At the other end was a group of conservatives who tried to win popular support on the slogan of ‘Islam and clean air’- well aware of the pollution that besets Iran’s capital.

Amirahmadi pointed out, however, that in big cities like Teheran and Isfahan, “people voted on the basis of personalities, somebody they knew and liked as a person rather than the bearer of a particular ideologicy or policy.”

For Iranians it was their first ever experience of grass-roots politics.This, and a feeling among ordinary citizens that the recent poll gave them a real voice in the running of local affairs will help liberalise the political system in Iran, according to longtime Iran watchers.