Campaigning to begin in Iran amid fears

Iran Mania News ^ | December 12,2003 | Iran Mania

[Pan_Yans Wife]

"Why should I bother to vote?" asks 25-year-old Dariush, one of the millions of young Iranians who helped put reformists in power during the last parliamentary elections in 2000.

"The reformists have done nothing. Khatami has had the backing of 22 million people yet he hasn't stood up to the conservatives," he says of embattled President Mohammad Khatami, whose pledge of 'Islamic democracy' saw him win landslide victories in 1997 and 2001.

In just over two months, Iranians will again be deciding on the way forward for the quarter-century-old Islamic republic.

Will it be yet more struggling between elected reformists and powerful entrenched hardliners, or a message that the system is not working with the majority of the 41 million eligible voters staying away?

Campaigning for the February 20, 2004 Majlis elections gets under way on Saturday, when parliamentary hopefuls can start registering their candidacies.

But aside from fears that frustration with reforms may lead to an all-time low turnout, reformists will also be battling a tough vetting procedure imposed by the conservative-dominated Guardians Council -- a kind of unelected senate that over the past four years has blocked most reformist legislation.

Furthermore, they will have a hard time convincing voters they deserve a repeat victory in light of an economic track record tarnished by high inflation and high unemployment.

A clear warning was given to reformists -- who presently hold 210 out of the 290 seats in the Majlis -- during municipal elections in February 2003, when turnout hit a record low in a country more used to seeing participation figures that would impress many Western democracies.

In Tehran, Isfahan and Mashhad, turnout was just 12 percent. As a result, conservatives won in the sprawling capital and other major urban centres.

A repeat of that for the Majlis elections would likely see conservatives control parliament -- and therefore have the power to throw out reformist ministers -- as well as be a blow to the regime's legitimacy.

Hence both sides of the political divide are calling on Iranians to turn out in force, and the shock of many who now have their local councils run by hardliners busy turning popular cultural centres into prayer rooms and stepping up social controls may make those contemplating a boycott think again.

Voter participation was 69.25 percent in 2000's parliamentary elections. A number of opinion polls have put the February turnout just slightly lower -- between 50 and 60 percent.

But turnout is also seen as depending on whether the Guardians Council chooses to use its vetting power to weed out reformist candidates as it has done in the past.

The registration phase, which marks the start of pre-campaigning, lasts one week. After going through the reformist-run interior ministry, which manages the logistics of the elections, candidacies then go for approval to bodies appointed by the Guardians Council.

It was these bodies that were targetted by a reformist bill passed last year aimed at ending election vetting. The bill was subsequently shot down by the Guardians Council itself, leaving conservatives still having the last say on who can stand.

And recently, one conservative argued that "the Guardians Council should not repeat the same errors it has made in the past by approving the candidacies of those who do not deserve to be in parliament."

A top official in the judiciary, another key bastion of Iran's religious right, also called on "all those with cases before the courts" not to present themselves. The judiciary is known to have cases against large numbers of reformers.

The Guardians Council has also put in place a network of some 200,000 observers, and its head Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati in a sermon Friday warned that candidates "should not spend too much money... and in their speeches should not raise divisive issues."

But despite the pressures and threats -- including a string of attacks on reformist figures -- the pro-Khatami camp is not expected to boycott.

"Not taking part," asserted prominent reformist thinker Behzad Nabavi recently, "would be to concede defeat in advance."