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Iran's reformists take one last
gasp
PRAGUE - Iran's protesting
deputies, making one last attempt to salvage themselves
before Friday's elections, have asked openly in a letter
whether Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was behind
the decision to ban reformist candidates from running in
parliamentary elections.
Khamenei stepped into
the political fray several times over the past month to
mediate a mounting conflict between reformist lawmakers
and the 12 members of the hardline Guardians Council
(GC). The supreme leader asked the council to review its
decision to disqualify thousands of largely reformist
candidates. But in the end, nearly 2,300 candidates -
including 80 incumbent deputies - remained off the list,
and Khamenei asked both sides to put their grievances
behind them.
"Do the members of the Guardians
Council dare to resist your orders?" reformists asked in
their letter, which was published on Wednesday. "Or is
it that, as rumors say, despite your public statements
they were permitted by you to disqualify these people
illegally and widely?"
The letter also accuses
the supreme leader of heading a political system that
fosters human rights abuses. "The popular revolution [in
1979] brought freedom and independence for the country
in the name of Islam," the letter reads. "But now you
lead a system in which legitimate freedoms and the
rights of the people are being trampled on in the name
of Islam."
Criticizing the supreme leader is
very rare in the Islamic republic and is considered a
criminal offense. So far there has been no public
response from the Supreme Leader to the letter. However,
in a demonstration of just how unwilling the GC is to
accept criticism, the hardliners have closed down two of
Iran's leading newspapers for publishing the letter. The
liberal Sharq and Yas-e No dailies were sealed by order
of the Tehran Prosecutor's Office, according to reports.
It was not clear how long the newspapers would be banned
from publishing. No reports on the letter were carried
by state radio, television or the official IRNA news
agency and out of dozens of daily newspapers in Iran,
only Sharq and Yas-e-No dared to publish it.
Some observers say the reformist deputies - who
earlier staged a three-week-long sit-in to protest the
council's electoral ban - are now ratcheting up the
pressure in an attempt to regain the trust of Iranians
disillusioned by the failure of the reformist movement.
The GC - whose members are appointed by the
Supreme Leader - has used its broad veto rights to
reject nearly all of the progressive bills approved by
the country's reformist parliament. Now the reformists
say the council, with the tacit approval of Khamenei,
have abused "the most basic right of the people: to
choose and to be chosen".
Tehran-based
journalist Arash Ghavidel told Radio Farda that several
factors contributed to the reformists' decision to
radicalize their protest.
"The first thing is
that people did not really support their protest.
Secondly, the members of [President Mohammad] Khatami's
cabinet who had threatened to resign [over the
disqualifications] did not do so. The third thing was
the decision that the elections would take place as
scheduled - the [protesting deputies] wanted to delay
the elections by all means possible, but that also did
not happen," Ghavidel said.
Despite calls by
Khatami and other officials for elections to be
postponed to allow time to resolve the disqualification
dispute, Khamenei - who as Supreme Leader has the final
word on all matters related to the Islamic Republic -
said the vote would go ahead as scheduled. The
protesters wrote in their letter: "Is there any
interpretation other than that you approve the illegal
actions of the Guardians Council, since you insisted on
holding such elections on February 20?" The lawmakers
also warned of a widening gap between the regime and the
people.
But Rouzbeh Mir Ebrahimi, a second
journalist in Tehran, told Radio Farda the letter will
have little impact on Friday's elections. "The deputies
who staged the sitin in parliament were sure themselves
that that would not have any results; they just wanted
it to be registered in history. And this letter, I
think, has also been written for the same purpose - so
that it is registered in history - and not in order to
bring things back to normal. And its only effect is that
it will radicalize the political atmosphere inside the
country and widen the rift in the reformist camp,"
Ebrahimi said.
Meanwhile, Khatami has urged
Iranians to participate in the elections, warning a low
voter turnout will only benefit the hardliners. But
Iran's main pro-reform party, the Participation Front -
led by the president's younger brother, Mohammad Reza
Khatami, who himself is among the blacklisted candidates
- has said it will not take part in the elections.
Analysts predict few Iranians will turn out for the
vote.
Copyright (c) 2004, RFE/RL Inc.
Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty,
1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington DC 20036
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