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Iran's reformers, conservatives square
off
By Safa Haeri
PARIS - A new round of public confrontation between
the ruling conservatives - a minority of non-elected
clerics who rule Iran - and the official
reformists who control both the executive and the
legislative powers but have no say in decision-making,
has set the tone for the runup to the majlis
(parliament) elections, due in less than six months.
The two heads of the Iranian political system
are engaged in a cutthroat fight on two fronts, and the
outcome could well determine, and eventually shape, the
future of the present Iranian regime.
Two
important ministries of Hojjatoleslam Mohammad Khatami's
government are clashing with two major organs controlled
by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the leader of the Islamic
Republic: these are the Interior Ministry against the
Guardians Council (GC) and the Intelligence Ministry
against the powerful judiciary.
The first battle
is about the future of the next majlis elections, where
the conservatives, through the GC, a non-elected,
12-member institution, are responsible for vetting all
candidates to all elections in Iran as well as for
approving the conformity of all laws passed by the
parliament with Sharia, or Islamic, canons.
The
Guardians have already rejected two government bills
approved by the majlis. The first one calls for
curtailing some extra powers of the GC, namely that of
vetting the candidates. The other wants some of the
president's constitutional prerogatives that are
contested by the judiciary to be restored to him.
Two weeks ago Interior Minister Hojjatoleslam
Abdolvahed Mousavi-Lari ordered provincial governors not
to cooperate with the GC in opening offices for the
coming elections, a decision that was immediately
denounced by the election watchdog, stating that the GC
did not need the governors anyway.
The second
front is the theater of an unprecedented clash that
opposes the Intelligence Ministry with the judiciary
over the death of Zahra Kazemi, a Canadian-Iranian
photojournalist killed in July by interrogators from the
office of Sa'id Mortazavi, the prosecutor of both Tehran
and the Islamic revolution tribunal, the Intelligence
Ministry and the Law Enforcement Forces.
Arrested at the end of June while taking
pictures of families of jailed anti-regime protesters
near the notorious Evin prison in the outskirts of the
capital, the Montreal-based photographer died 10 days
latter of brain hemorrhage "caused by a heavy object
hitting her skull", according to an investigation team
formed on orders of the president.
At first, the
authorities said that Kazemi had died in a hospital
belonging to the Revolutionary Guards of a brain stroke,
but ended up by admitting that the death was the result
of a "heavy object" that had hit the victim's head while
in custody.
According to the French daily
Liberation, Judge Mortazavi, who is a protege of the
regime's strongman, had personally hit Kazemi's head
with his shoe while trying to force her into confessing
that she was on an espionage mission in Iran.
But on Monday, a criminal judge in charge of
Kazemi's case caused a stir by announcing that he had
identified two interrogators from the Intelligence
Ministry as the murderers of the photographer, charging
them with "semi intentional" killing.
The
announcement outraged the Intelligence Minister,
Hojjatoleslam Ali Yunesi, who, in a statement, not only
rejected the judiciary's findings as "utterly baseless",
but also promised to inform the public about the real
circumstances of the tragedy.
"Claims made by
the prosecutor of Bench 1 of Tehran's Criminal Court, in
which two of the Information Ministry's interrogators
are accused of being accomplices in the quasi
intentional murder of Ms Kazemi are sheer lies," the
official news agency IRNA quoted a deputy information
minister as saying.
"The Information Ministry
has discovered the truth of the matter on the case
related to the death of Zahra Kazemi, and is intended to
publish it for public information in very near future,"
the official added, in a veiled threat that the main
culprit might well be the very person of Mortazavi.
This is the second time in as many weeks that
the judiciary has been charged with "sheer lies". The
first time was when Mohammad Hoseyn Khoshvaqt, a general
director at the Guidance and Islamic Culture Ministry in
charge of the press, revealed that Mortazavi had forced
him to make a false announcement by stating that Kazemi
had died of a brain stroke.
The
claim was further confirmed by the official news
agency IRNA, saying that the same kind of statement it had
carried concerning the photojournalist was in fact
"dictated" by the prosecutor in person.
Iranian
political analysts are unanimous in predicting that not
only are the conservatives determined not to allow the
next unicameral house be controlled by the reformists
(as is the case now), they also want an end to the
present political chaos caused by the endless feuds
between the system's two opposed concepts of theocracy
based of one man's absolute rule versus a republicanism
mixed with a "tolerant religion", as defined by Khatami.
In the view of the analysts, the recent
harsh crackdown on political dissidents and the
independent press, which is close to the reformists, by the
judiciary, a power that is directly controlled by
Ayatollah Khamenei and which serves as the
conservatives' political and police arms, is a clear
indication of the hardliners' plans in that direction.
At the same time, the analysts say, the government's
unprecedented firm stand in facing up to the
conservatives is aimed at recovering at least part of
the popularity that it has lost with its base, made up
mostly of young voters, because of its dramatic failure
in delivering the reforms that it had promised on the
one hand and Khatami's continued bowing to the
conservatives on the other.
To "punish" the
reformers, Iranians who in all recent presidential and
parliamentary elections had massively voted for Khatami
and the reformers, deserted the polls in the last city
and village council elections, offering Tehran
municipality to the conservatives.
"The
reformists' big mistake from the outset was that the
political system of the Islamic Republic, based on the
absolute rule of one person, is anything but democratic
in the Western terminology of the concept," Dr Qasem
Sho'leh Sa'di, a lawyer and outspoken political
dissident speaking for the neo-reformists told Asia
Times Online.
Contrary to the official
reformists who insist on reforming Iran's constitution,
the neo-reformers want drastic changes to the system,
replacing the present theocracy with a secular
democracy.
But Dr Sadeq Ziba Kalam, a professor
of international politics at Tehran University, says
that considering the mounting international pressures on
Iran, officials on both sides will close ranks in
limiting the scope of their divergences.
"The
tragedy of the death of Ms Kazemi and its repercussions
on national and international scenes, coupled with other
issues [accusations of a nuclear weapons program, the
arrest of a former Iranian envoy in connection with a
terror act] would force the decision-makers to stop the
generalization of their feuds," Kalam told the
Prague-based Radio Farda (Tomorrow), the Persian service
of Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty, controlled by the
United States.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online
Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information
on our sales and syndication policies.)
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