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Iran's reformists throw in the towel
By Safa Haeri
PARIS - The
Iranian crisis over the mass disqualification of
reformist candidates, among them several leading
lawmakers, has reached boiling point, with some 120
reformist deputies announcing their resignation. And
adding insult to injury, the Guardians Council (GC) - an
unelected hardline body responsible for vetting all
candidates to all elections in the Islamic Republic -
made public the list of 5,450 candidates approved out of
a total of 7,900 hopefuls, increasing the number of
disqualified members of the majlis (Iranian parliament)
to 87 from the original 80.
Reading a statement
on Sunday on behalf of the 100-plus deputies barred by
the 12-member GC from running for the next elections due
on February 20, dozens of whom have held sit-in protests
at parliament over the past three weeks, Mohsen
Mirdamadi, disqualified chairman of the foreign and
national security affairs commission, accused the GC of
"killing the spirit of parliamentary democracy, an
action that pleases colonialists".
"The story of
the past 100 years of the Iranian majlis tells us the
sad, bur real, fact that every time the forces of
oppression and totalitarianism had worked hand-in-hand
with those [who] wanted to tame the majlis, they worked
hand-in-hand with those of colonialism," Mirdamadi told
a stormy session that was broadcast live by the
state-run, conservative-controlled Iranian Radio.
But it is highly unlikely that the conservatives
will be moved by the decision, for the very simple
reason that, according to majlis procedures, it would
take weeks before it became effective, while the life of
the sixth majlis comes to its end in less than three
weeks.
In their statement, the disqualified
lawmakers said in order to denounce the "illegal, unfair
and undemocratic" nature of the GC's decision, not only
would they resign en mass, but also refrain from taking
part in elections that, in the words of Mirdamadi and
interior minister Hojjatoleslam Abdolvahed Mousavi-Lari,
is "more a selection than election". But Ayatollah Ali
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the second most powerful man
after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, refused to
play hardball, announcing the end of the row by
proclaiming the conservative's determination not to
bargain with the reformers.
In a sermon to
worshippers in Tehran during the traditional Friday
prayers, Rafsanjani called on Iranian voters to come to
the polls "massively, regardless of any origin or
ideologies, to disarm the enemies of the Islamic
Republic, like the Americans and the Europeans, as well
as their local pawns, the counter-revolutionaries",
referring to the reformers who oppose the massive
disqualifications by the GC.
This was the first
time that the former president, who chairs the powerful
Assembly for Discerning the Interests of the State - or
Expediency Council - placed in the same basket the
reformers, who control the present majlis, with the
monarchists and other groups opposed to the Islamic
Republic.
Commenting on the latest efforts
deployed by Hojjatoleslam Mehdi, the speaker of the
majlis, and by President Mohammad Khatami to have
Khamenei intervene in an effort to diffuse the crisis,
Dr Qasem Sho'leh Sa'di, a former member of the majlis,
said the reformists are paying the price for their
"disloyalty" to the public by failing to carry out the
reforms they had promised on the one hand and the
"weaknesses of Mr Khatami who, ever since he came to
power seven years ago, he always bowed to the
conservatives and became a champion of lost
opportunities" on the other.
"The reformists,
instead of hearing the voice of the public that demands
changes in the system, reinforced the structures of the
regime by calling on the leader to diffuse the row.
Hence the public's apathy and indifference to the
crisis," Sa'di told the Prague-based Radio Farda
(Tomorrow).
According to a survey carried out
recently by the Interior Ministry of Iran's eligible
voters, more than 77 percent have said they would not
take part in the forthcoming elections against 11
percent saying they would. Some 7 percent have said they
"very probably" would not go to the poling stations
while more than 2 percent said they "probably would" and
2 percent having "no idea".
"What the
conservatives are after is to end the existing duality
in the governance. They want to have the control of the
regime in its totality, and to this end they do not care
about what the world will say," Sa'di told Asia Times
Online.
Sadeq Ziba Kalam, an international
politics professor at Tehran University, agreed with
Sa'di, telling Radio Farda that the conservatives'
scheme to get the reformists out of their way had
started almost a year ago. "Regardless of the fact that
the reformists are more popular, the public's
indifference towards this crisis and their lack of
support for the reformist candidates has made the
conservatives more combative. If nothing dramatic
happens in the coming days, one would say there is no
reason for the conservatives to change their attitude,"
he observed.
The crisis, unprecedented in the
25-year life of the Islamic Republic since the
revolution of 1979, deepened on Saturday, with contrary
statements attributed to the government and the
president saying that the possibility of an amiable
solution has reached a "dead-end" and that elections in
such a situation "lacked legitimacy and legality".
As the disqualified reformists announced their
decision to resign, Iranian news agencies reported that
obeying the chief executive, ministers and provincial
governors decided to remain in office, forgetting
earlier threats to resign. Meanwhile, the office of
Khatami denied a report by the official IRNA news agency
earlier on Saturday that he had told reporters talks
with the GC to resolve the crisis were at a "dead-end".
"Now that the brave people of Iran have
discovered the true visage of the Council of the
Guardians as a body opposed to the reforms,
representatives of the people have no other way but to
boycott the elections," Khatami was quoted as saying,
again urging the government to delay the date of the
elections. But instead of heeding his camp, Khatami once
again bowed to the ruling hardliners by insisting
forcefully that that the voting "must be organized on
time", thus dismissing his interior minister for having
favored the postponing of the elections.
"An
election in which more than half of the seats are
pre-determined is not legitimate," Mousavi-Lari, whose
ministry is responsible for organizing the elections
told IRNA. In a letter to the GC, the minister had
demanded that the elections be delayed, waiting for the
divergences between the government and the majlis on the
one side and the conservatives on the other be solved.
But in his answer, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the
secretary of the GC, reminded him bluntly that he could
resign if he thinks that the Interior Ministry cannot
organize the elections on time.
"According to
the law, the Interior Ministry is obliged to hold the
elections on the legally appointed date," GC member Reza
Zavarei told the independent students' news agency ISNA.
He said the bans confirmed on Friday could not be
appealed.
Reminding that both the European Union
and the United States have made the conservatives their
favorite partners "as seen by the warm, almost 'head of
state' welcome reserved by France for Hojjatoleslam
Hasan Rohani, the influential secretary of the Supreme
Council for National Security when he visited Paris two
weeks ago, regarded as the next speaker and probably
president", one journalist told Asia Times Online: "The
elections would be held on time and the conservative
candidates would occupy the majority of the parliament's
292 seats. The rest, the warning that a poor turnout
would harm the legitimacy of the regime, etc, are plain
nonsense."
As the dispute over the
disqualifications that some analysts describe as a
"storm in a glass of water" drew nearer to its breaking
point, the possible visit to Iran by an American
delegation developed into yet another controversy, with
the Iranian Foreign Affairs Ministry denying reports in
the American press quoting some US congressmen about a
planned trip to Tehran. "No plans for US congressmen or
senators to visit Iran have been made and this sort of
trip is not on our agenda," the ministry's senior
spokesman, Hamid Reza Asefi, told the IRNA.
Iranian representatives at the majlis also
expressed their objection to the invitation. "If
American lawmakers are to come to Iran, it should be on
our invitation, but we ignore everything and have not
been informed about it," one member of the foreign and
national security affairs committee observed.
Asefi's comments come a day after Senator Arlen
Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, said the visit could
set the stage for a later mission by US lawmakers.
Washington cut all relations with the Islamic Republic
after revolutionary students, most of them now favoring
the resumption of ties, stormed the US embassy in Tehran
on November 4, 1979 and held 55 American diplomats
hostage for 444 days.
The senator made the
statement after meeting the Iranian ambassador to the
United Nations Mohammad Javad Zarif over diner in
Washington DC last week. He gave no exact date for the
trip, but press reports have pointed to the month of
February, just over a week before the Iranian elections.
Zarif's appearance in Washington was a significant
gesture for the White House, as Iran is still considered
as a "rogue state".
Like other diplomats from
nations with which the US does not have official
relations, Zarif is confined to New York, where the UN
is headquartered, and must remain within a radius of 30
kilometers from the city center. Playing down the
importance of the meeting, Asefi observed that this was
not the first time that Iran's representative at the UN
"in order to explain things to non-governmental people
in the United States, attends such sessions".
"Before this, Iran's representatives have been
to Washington for similar purposes", he added,
mentioning that Foreign Affairs Minister Kamal Kharrazi
had met US Senator Joseph Biden, an influential member
of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on the
sidelines of the World Economic Forum held in the Swiss
mountain resort of Davos last week.
"Mr Zarif
would not agree with the visit of American lawmakers
without having clear authorization from the leader,
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who decides on all major
policies," one Iranian diplomat told Asia Times Online,
adding that "sometimes, the office of the leader fails
to inform the Foreign Affairs Ministry about its
decisions", referring to the conservatives plans to
start talks with the United States after the forthcoming
elections.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online
Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
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