Posted on 02/19/2004 12:15:37 PM PST by areafiftyone
Iran's beleaguered reform movement on Thursday suffered a new blow ahead of Friday's parliamentary election as the judiciary moved against reformist newspapers, websites and campaign offices.
Disillusionment among voters seems set to produce a far lower turnout than the 67 per cent who turned out for a reformist landslide in the last parliamentary elections four years ago.
Neither the Yas-e No nor the Shargh daily appeared on Thursday after they carried long extracts of a letter from reformist parliamentary deputies criticising Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, in their editions the previous day.
Saeed Mortazavi, Tehran's general prosecutor, also ordered internet service providers to block three websites.
The judiciary also on Thursday sealed an office belonging to the Islamic Iran Participation Front, the leading reformist party, agencies reported.
"They are blocking our channels of communication with the people," Ali Shakourirad, a leading member of the IIPF, which is boycotting the election, told Reuters.
The deputies' letter broke a taboo in the Islamic republic by suggesting that the supreme leader, who says his constitutional authority derives from God, had been partisan in handling the exclusion from Friday's election of 2,000 mainly reformist candidates by the Guardian Council, a constitutional watchdog.
"They closed the daily newspapers not simply because of the letter but also because of the worry that the two papers would disclose the real turnout of the election on Friday," said Akbar Montajebi, political correspondent of Yas-e No.
The blocking of the political websites also appears to reflect concern about the sensitive issue of voter turnout.
Conservatives hope for a reasonable poll, both to win a majority of the 290 parliamentary seats and to show public faith in the Islamic republic, which marked its 25th anniversary this month.
Mohammad Reza Khatami, leader of Mosharekate, the largest reformist party, this week alleged in the Financial Times that conservatives planned to increase turnout by forging ID cards - an allegation repeated in some domestic media. Mr Khatami said that a turnout of 40 per cent would not count as a victory for the conservatives.
Last week, the supreme leader used his speech at Friday prayers to defend press freedom while accusing "foreigners" of distorting the political realities of Iran.
The reformist President Mohammad Khatami has appealed to Iranians to vote, but said on Thursday that "despotism and the imposition of ideas" would bring only corruption.
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