Asia Times: Iranian reformists prepare for challenge


	May 31, 2000	atimes.com

Central Asia/Russia

Iranian reformists prepare for challenge
By Rabindra Adhikari

DUBAI - Iran's first reformist-dominated parliament since the 1979 Islamic Revolution has got down to business, bracing for the challenge conservatives appear set to mount from within and outside the legislature.

The reformist-conservative tussle in the new parliament that opened May 27, is likely to be over press and personal freedoms on which the rival factions have clashed most fiercely in the past three years.

Although they lost control of the legislature in the February elections to a motley group of supporters of President Mohammed Khatami, the hardliners still monopolize key levers of power, including the Council of Guardians, the judiciary and security forces.

With a more than two-thirds majority in parliament, reformists would find it easy to enact laws that loosen state curbs on press and personal freedoms. However, these would have to be cleared by the Council of Guardians who can veto legislation if they think it is against Islam and the principles of the revolution.

The Guardians, who supervised the polls, had delayed endorsing the pro-reformist sweep citing allegations of fraud. It took personal intervention by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for the deadlock to be broken and the new parliament to be constituted.

Moreover, the reformist majority is a loose coalition of social democrats and moderate groups. Elections are fought on a non-party basis. The mechanism that brings together the policy platforms of individual candidates is relatively obscure and susceptible to manipulation. Leftists and moderates had formed a coalition in 1997 after Khatami rode to power amid the ''Teheran Spring'' movement. Any new alignments that may take place as the parliamentary session progresses would determine the political course of the country - something the conservatives will watch very closely.

In the months since the elections, the hardliners have shut down 18 pro-Khatami newspapers, prompting leading reformist lawmaker Ahmad Borqani to declare: ''The top priority (of the new parliament) will be to ease the crackdown on the press.''

Much depends on the supreme leader who is known as a supporter of the hardliners, but has often shown the political shrewdness needed to avoid a direct conflict by restraining the conservatives. Khamenei is believed to have encouraged former President Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani to resign from the new parliament even before it assembled, in the interest of ''national unity''.

Rafsanjani, who was the leading conservative candidate for the post of presiding officer of parliament, was accused of using unfair means to win from his constituency in Teheran. In a statement announcing his decision to quit, Rafsanjani said he had decided that instead of becoming a lawmaker, he would remain in his appointed post as head of the Expediency Council that mediates between parliament and the powerful Guardians.

With Rafsanjani ruling himself out for the speaker's post, the chances of Mehdi Karubi becoming speaker are seen to have brightened. A close ally of President Khatami, 63-year-old Karubi was speaker during 1989-92.

Close observers of Iranian politics caution against reading too much into the parliamentary dominance of the reformists.

Soon after the three-hour weekend inaugural session of parliament, reformist and conservative lawmakers visited the mausoleum of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to pay respects to the father of the Islamic revolution that overthrew the pro-American Shah of Iran 21 years ago. The trip to Khomeini's tomb was perhaps a sign that the basic tenets of the revolution are still firmly in place. But that kind of symbolism may not be enough to placate the conservatives who want to prevent any weakening of Islam-guided laws and practices that govern all aspects of life in Iran.

However, in a significant pointer to the changing times, two women deputies entered parliament on the opening day without wearing the traditional chador - the long black covering obligatory for women that shields hair and body contours from public view. This was the first time such a thing had happened since the Islamic revolution. The women wore ordinary clothes and covered their heads with only scarves.

Khatami has hinted that he would rather avoid a confrontation with the conservatives. In his speech at the inaugural session of the new parliament, the president was seen to echo the mood of many Iranians. ''Society is now waiting to be rid of . . . certain political disputes, which perhaps are not that unusual and abnormal, given our current political circumstances,'' Khatami told the house.

The convening of the new legislature on schedule despite the bitter controversy surrounding the election results, is also seen as a sign of an emerging mood of conciliation.

(Inter Press Service)