Iran’s Reformers Dominate Council Elections

By Peter Kiernan

Iran’s local elections held in late February have confirmed support for the policies of reformist President Mohammed Khatami. In many large cities, especially Tehran and Isfahan, candidates from moderate groupings won convincingly. Independents were elected in most rural areas, reflecting concern for local issues which competed with the wider national debate over an emerging “civil society.”

Although the elections will do little to shift the balance of power within the Islamic regime in favor of Khatami, the positive result for reformers in the urban centers is a psychological boost and represents a symbolic victory. After 18 months in power, Khatami’s program of reform is still supported by the majority of Iranians despite a worsening economic situation and intense resistance to change from the regime’s conservative establishment. The next test of strength will be the majlis (parliamentary) elections, scheduled for March 2000.

In Tehran, candidates representing the pro-Khatami Islamic Iran Participation Front won 13 out of 15 seats, with independents winning the remaining two. The biggest winner in the capital was Abdollah Nouri, a former interior minister and key Khatami supporter who was impeached last year by the conservative-dominated majlis.

Nouri was also physically attacked by vigilantes in 1998 while he was attending a mourning ceremony for Iran’s soldiers killed during the Iran-Iraq war. He topped the poll by a wide margin, probably because he was originally disqualified from running.

In an attempt to prevent prominent Khatami supporters from seeking election, the majlis appointed an electoral supervisory board to vet candidates. The board disqualified Nouri, along with scores of other reform-minded nominees.

This represented a direct challenge to the Interior Ministry, which had the responsibility for conducting the election. The ministry didn’t recognize any move to screen candidates, so a mediating body was established by Khatami to work out the dispute. This body refused the grounds for disqualification and, on the eve of the poll, most disqualified candidates were permitted to run. Not only did Nouri top the list with 600,000 out of 1.4 million votes, but 6 of the 12 candidates whom the supervisory board tried to disqualify were among the top 10 highest polling candidates. Furthermore, five of them finished in the top six, including two women.

Reformers also polled well in Isfahan, an historic city of about 1.5 million people where feelings were running high about intimidation from the regime establishment. Reformist groupings won 7 out of 11 positions on the Isfahan council.

Feelings were running high about intimidation from the establishment.

Isfahan is the home of the former reformist mayor of Tehran, Gholamhossein Karbaschi, who was charged with fraud last year by the conservative judiciary in a trial widely seen as political. The senior cleric in Isfahan, Ayatollah Taheri, is one of the most outspoken supporters of Khatami among Iran’s Shi’i clergy, and one of Taheri’s Friday sermons was broken up by vigilantes who wanted to silence him and intimidate his supporters.

Isfahan is also a city that gives strong support to a prominent cleric under house arrest, Ayatollah Montazeri. This cleric was at one time the heir apparent to Khomeini as religious leader, or vali-e-faqih, but was cast aside and replaced by the current leader, or rahbar, Ali Khamenei. Since then Montazeri has criticized human rights abuses by the regime and recently called for normalization of relations with the United States. Since the election it has been made illegal to publish Montazeri’s name in any newspaper in Iran, and a close associate of his, Moshen Kadivar, has been arrested for campaigning on Montazeri’s behalf.

Another significant result of the poll was the success of female candidates. Although fewer than 5 percent of candidates across Iran were women, many polled exceptionally well. President Khatami’s older sister was elected in the family hometown of Ardakan, and women candidates were leading in 20 cities and towns.

Overall, the turnout for the poll was 24 million, or 65 percent of eligible voters (men and women over the age of 15). This was much higher than the 45 percent participation in the elections held late last year for the Assembly of Experts, a constitutional body empowered with the responsibility of appointing and dismissing the religious leader.

Last Year’s Low Turnout

In that election the Guardian Council—a body that assesses the eligibility of candidates for assembly, majlis and presidential elections—largely based on their Islamic credentials—prevented many reformists from running, ensuring a conservative majority. As a result, fewer than half the electorate bothered to vote, and the victory for the regime’s hard-liners was widely seen as hollow. In contrast, the turnout for the current council poll was much higher, as people were given the chance to participate in an election not stacked with candidates from one side.

So what is the real significance of Iran’s recent municipal poll? On the one hand it was an election for positions in the lowest tier of government, where officials will take charge of matters such as land use, garbage collection and provision of basic local services. Therefore, the balance of power in the regime has changed little and the scope for reform that Khatami can exercise will still be restricted.

The judiciary, security forces and the majlis remain controlled by the conservatives, and the rahbar, Khamanei, retains enough power to prevent Khatami from going too far, especially on the issue of restoring normal relations with the U.S. Nevertheless, Khatami and Khamanei have so far avoided a direct confrontation with each other, as both are committed to the current Islamic system of government in the country.

Despite the fact that the effective distribution of power between the regime’s factions hasn’t changed in the short term, the council poll was a symbolic victory for Khatami and, in the long run, it could prove to be quite important. He was elected in 1997 on a platform of promoting the rule of law, the authority of the 1979 constitution, and building institutions that would be accountable to the public. In effect, he wants to build a civil society in Iran, albeit within an Islamic framework. There was provision for local elections in the constitution adopted after the revolution but it had never been acted upon. So Khatami’s facilitation of the poll was a small but significant step in strengthening Iran’s institutions.

It is easy to be cynical about the motives of leaders of any Middle Eastern country, but the fact that issues such as the rule of law, accountable institutions and popular participation are firmly on the policy agenda provides cause for cautious optimism for Iran’s future. In a sense, the genie has left the bottle.

The regime’s conservatives, feeling threatened by Khatami’s platform of legal and political reform, have responded defensively and sometimes violently. This has only strengthened Khatami’s support by the public, who have yet to blame him for the country’s severe economic problems.

At the end of 1998 four prominent liberal writers and a dissident were brutally murdered, and pressure by pro-reform newspapers for investigations and public outrage eventually led to an admission by the powerful Intelligence Ministry that its own personnel were involved. The Intelligence Ministry is a bastion for Islamic hard-liners, and the public confession was a blow for them.

Furthermore the minister, Qorbanali Najafabadi, was eventually forced to resign in disgrace. Even though his successor is another conservative, the power of the regime establishment has been shaken as Iranians feel more confident in demanding accountability and an end to human rights abuses.

Observers agree that the real battle between reformers and conservatives will be in next year’s majlis elections. If current support for Khatami is maintained throughout this year, however, his supporters should win with a considerable majority. This assumes that the Council of Guardians will not prevent moderates from running, as they did with the Assembly of Experts election.

Stacking candidate lists with people from the dominant faction has been an integral feature of the Islamic republic since the revolution, but an emboldened Iranian populace now is less likely to tolerate such tactics. The next 12 months will therefore be a crucial stage in Iran’s political development.

Peter Kiernan is a free-lance journalist who writes on economics and politics in the Middle East.