IRAN VOTES Expect more of the
same By Barbara Slavin
TEHRAN - Iranians vote for a new
Parliament on Friday in elections that have
generated little enthusiasm in the country but
which could impact Iran's presidential balloting
next year.
Conservatives will almost
certainly retain a majority in the 290-seat
legislature (Majlis) because of widespread
disqualification of prominent reformists by a
clerical body, the Guardian Council. Yet that
majority is expected to be more critical than the
incumbent legislature of the economic policies of
Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad.
Under the Iranian system, most powers
reside with a senior cleric, Supreme Leader Ali
Khamenei. Ahmadinejad has served the leader, in
the view of political analysts in Iran, by
aggressively
promoting Iran's nuclear program.
But the president's inflationary economic policies
- doling out handouts to the poor while failing to
attract job-generating investment - are turning
into a liability for the regime.
"The next
Parliament will be more loyal to Khamenei and more
critical of Ahmadinejad," says Saeed Laylaz, a
prominent reformist and former deputy interior
minister in the cabinet of Ahmadinejad's
predecessor, Mohammad Khatami.
Laylaz
thinks Ahmadinejad will run for a second term in
2009 because "his main assignment is the nuclear
program". Since Ahmadinejad's election in 2005,
Iran has accelerated efforts to enrich uranium - a
program Iran insists is for peaceful purposes but
that could give it the capacity to build a bomb.
Others think Khamenei will cast
Ahmadinejad aside. One regime insider, who asked
not to be identified, said Khamenei will anoint
another conservative to run for president in 2009,
perhaps the current speaker of Parliament, Gholam
Ali Haddad-Adel, whose daughter is married to
Khamenei's son.
"Ahmadinejad is like a
balloon," this insider said. "He will not explode
but will slowly deflate."
Meanwhile, the
regime has tried to drum up participation in the
parliamentary elections by claiming that the
George W Bush administration does not want
Iranians to vote, to demonstrate the unpopularity
of the Iranian political system.
That
argument resonates with Mahnoz Chatrfirouzeh, 28,
the public relations manager for a cultural
center. She will vote, she says, because otherwise
nothing will change. "We should not expect others
to come and teach us democracy," she said. "We
prefer to make decisions by ourselves."
Other Iranians say they will sleep in on
Friday and ignore what they regard as a charade.
"I want the whole system to change," said one
young mother, also named Mahnoz, pointing to the
obligatory scarf covering her frosted hair.
The US presidential elections appear to be
generating more enthusiasm. Iranian newspapers are
full of articles about Democratic candidates
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and Republican
John McCain.
An Iranian academic said he
preferred McCain because Republicans - George W
Bush excluded - have historically been interested
in closer ties with Iran.
A college
student said he also wanted McCain to win but for
the opposite reason. "McCain will put pressure on
the Iranian government to change its ways," the
young man said.
Others view Obama as a
better choice, suggesting that the election of a
member of a US minority would appeal to a regime
that sees itself as the victim of oppression and
double standards.
Clinton, too, has fans
in Tehran.
"I'd love Hillary to be
president," said Mohammad Atrianfar, a veteran
publisher of reformist newspapers. "When her
husband was president, you had a good image all
over the world and spoke with good words to Iran.
Hillary would be the same."
Barbara Slavin
is senior diplomatic reporter at USA Today on
leave as a Jennings Randolph fellow at the US
Institute of Peace and the author of Bitter
Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the US and the
Twisted Path to Confrontation (St. Martin's
Press, 2007).
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