Thread: Reformists vs conservatives in Iran

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Reformists vs conservatives in Iran

Dr Maqsudul Hasan Nuri

The February 20, 2004 Parliamentary elections victory (7th Majlis) in Iran resulted in the overwhelming victory of the religious right/conservatives. Unlike the earlier 2000 elections for the 6th Majlis, these elections signified a total victory for the religious right.

Representing a temporary setback for reformers and decisive defeat for the reform movement that had emerged nearly seven years ago with the presidential victory of President Muhammad Khatami, the above elections are significant pointers to future tussles between conservative and reformist forces in Iran.

The defeat of reformists came about mostly because of mass disqualification of 3,533 out of 8,144 prospective candidates by the powerful Council of Guardians. Although some disqualifications were later reversed, most prominent reformist candidates, including 80 incumbent Majlis deputies were debarred from participating in the elections. This step was unprecedented - even surpassing the purge of Islamic left candidates prior to the 1992 parliamentary elections. Having suffered a total defeat in February 2003 municipal council elections they were anticipating the Guardians Council action before the disqualification move.

Since the 1979 Islamic revolution Iranians have gone to polls in large numbers. While the lowest turnout in a parliamentary contest to First Majlis (parliament) in 1980 was 52 per cent, in the parliamentary elections of 2000 it was almost 70 per cent. The Presidential elections of 1997 brought large sections of people to vote for change and liberal reforms.

Iran has one of the youngest populations in the world with nearly two-third under 30 years and voting age of 16 for both men and women. While the reformers have attributed their defeat to low turnout, there are some cogent reasons for their electoral debacle.

In the first place, the reformers in the last four years have faced a number of obstacles: eg, the conservative Iranian judiciary had shut down over one hundred reformist periodicals and jailed hundreds of political activists, progressive/liberal writers, artists, reformers, journalists and students. The non-elected Guardians Council vetoed certain reform legislation by the parliament.

The religious right skilfully and effectively campaigned on a platform that sought to improve the socio-economic conditions of Iranian masses, rather than promotion of religious ideology alone. The broad conservative coalition Abadgaran-e-Iran-e-Islami (Developers of Islamic Iran) drew strong support from the conservative business interests.

In the 2000 parliamentary elections, a vast majority of seats were captured by the reformists, led by President Muhammad Khatami. In 2001 presidential elections he won nearly 78 per cent of the votes. But instead of mobilising the masses, the reformist circles indulged in inner factional fighting and also against the hardliners - thus sapping their energies. Comprising 18 political groups and factions, they lacked a unified strategy. In the view of some observers, hamstrung by the Guardian Council and other conservative groups, they could have opted conveniently to resign en masse thereby improving their image amongst the populace. This could have given them high moral ground.

Today, the role of the 12-member Council of Guardians, as the strongest non-elected body is crucial in Iranian politics. As a form of constitutional court it is appointed from above. It has authority to interpret the Constitution and to determine if laws passed by the Constitution are valid or not. Although not a legislative body, it exercises veto power over the Iranian parliament. Its members are composed of Islamic clerics and lawyers. Six members are clerics who are selected by the Supreme Leader - the latter also serves as Iran’s head of state. The other six members are lawyers proposed by Iran’s judicial branch (selected in turn by the Supreme Leader) and voted in the Majlis. Members are selected for six years on a phased basis, so that half the membership changes every three years.

The Council holds veto power over all legislation proposed by the Majlis. It can drop a law based on two counts: anti-Islamic in spirit or content against the Constitution. While all members vote on the laws that are compatible with the Constitution, only six clerics vote on them being compatible with Islam. If any law is rejected, it will be passed back to the Majlis for correction. If the Majlis and the Council of Guardians do not decide on the case, it is passed on to the Expediency Council for a final decision.

All candidates of parliamentary or presidency elections are also candidates for Assembly of Experts who have to be cleared by the Guardians Council. Often controversial interpretation of the Constitution has led to numerous and bitter debates in Iran.

The president is elected for four years and can serve two terms. He is head of the executive branch and his job is to ensure that the Constitution is implemented - a point often stressed by the incumbent head of the state, Mohammad Khatami.

In practice though, presidential powers and Mr Khatami’s reformist tendencies are circumscribed by the clerics and conservatives in Iran’s power structure, and by the authority of the Supreme Leader. It is the Supreme leader, not the president, who controls the armed forces.

The reformists dominated the previous parliament. Constitutionally recognised minorities are also represented. The first post-revolutionary Majlis was elected in 1980 and had 273 members. In 2000 the number of seats increased to 293. Women and young people were the main bloc of voters who voted Muhammad Khatami to the presidency twice. Boys and girls under the age of 16 are not eligible to vote. Under the Islamic constitution, the Majlis cannot be dissolved.

All leading army and Revolutionary Guard commanders are appointed by the Supreme Leader and are answerable only to him. The Revolutionary Guard was formed after the 1979 Revolution to protect the new leaders and institutions and fight those opposing the Revolution. After the Iraqi invasion in 1980, the Revolutionary Guard gradually strengthened its position and developed its land, air and sea forces to become a fully-fledged army with enormous influence across the country. The armed forces comprise Revolutionary Guard and regular forces, have the right to vote and advice on which candidates to pick.

Of a total Iranian population of about 65 million, more than 35 million people are eligible. Some eight million of them were born after the 1979 revolution. Today, nearly 60 per cent of Iran’s population is under 24 years of age. The popular revolutionary slogan at the time of 1979 was "Freedom, Independence and an Islamic Republic". Freedom is still the cry of today’s generation, but they also yearn for justice, economic and administrative reform, prosperity, spirituality and rule of law.

The Iranian judiciary has never been independent from political influence. Until early last century the clergy controlled it. The system was later secularised, but after 1979 and in post-revolutionary Iran, the head of the judiciary became a post that was appointed by and answerable to the Supreme Leader. The judiciary also has the role of nominating six members to the Council of Guardians.

Until Ayatollah Khomeini’s death in 1989, radicals and left-wingers largely controlled the judiciary. But for the past 10 years it has been connected with the conservative camp under its former head, Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi. In order to speed up procedures, he created what is known as general courts, in which the presiding judge is also the prosecutor, and has total power. These courts did away with many of the safeguards for the individual.

Some analysts think that reform outside the government cannot work in the Iranian context. Original ideologues of reform were a group of security and intelligence people of the Islamic left who recruited reformists in their ranks. There were no organised reform circles outside the government.

The Reformists were less interested in promotion of public interests than in their vision of the Islamic Republic. Saeed Hajarian has noted about the reformists’ strategies, saying, that the primary aim of the reformist movement was "to turn the enemies of the system into critics and critics into supporters".

The reformists contended that if massive vetting followed by en masse disqualification of candidates were not carried out the people would have gone out to vote in a major way. But this is a self-delusion and exaggeration.

The February 2003 union elections, described as the "freest ever" in Iran, also showed a low turnout. So, if the people stayed away while vetting was minimum and the reformists did not mount any protest, the conservatives felt emboldened. If, according to them, some important reformist candidate were now effectively blocked from contesting the elections, the so-called "reform/liberal/Western-inspired movement" would meet its natural political death in Iran. Hence, the en masse disqualification exercise was undertaken. This worked as a major negative factor against the reformists, who, in any case, had showed a lacklustre performance. However, had they resisted the move, it could not have been such an easy walkover for the Islamic right.

The writer is Senior Research Fellow Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI) and visiting Professor, Fatima Jinnah Women’s University, Rawalpindi