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Reform or Not? Iran's Milestone Election

February 20, 2000
Web posted at: 6:39 PM EST (2339 GMT)

By Tony Karon

(TIME.com) --

There may be no debates or TV ads, much less political parties -- and a self-appointed group of conservative clergymen reserve the right to exclude any candidate advocating a separation of church and state -- but Iran's parliamentary election Friday nonetheless represents an opportunity for the Iranian people to make their voices heard. And that's a prospect that has the country's conservative political clergy understandably nervous. Last time voters were presented with such an opportunity, the conservatives allied with the country's supreme spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, suffered a humiliating defeat, as 70 percent of the voters chose the reformist Mohammed Khatami over the candidate endorsed by Khameini. This time, even though the conservatives managed to axe more than 1,000 liberal candidates before the election, the margin of their defeat may be even higher.

Conservative control of the Majlis, Iran's 270-seat legislature, has helped the clerics to stymie President Khatami's efforts to press through his reform agenda of strengthening the rule of law, providing greater freedom of speech and deepening Iran's Islamic version of democracy. "By most accounts reformers will capture the assembly from Islamic conservatives and hard-liners," says TIME Middle East bureau chief Scott MacLeod from Tehran. "But this being Iran, a victory for the reformers may not be precisely what it seems. While there's consensus on greater opening up to the West and economic reforms, there are important differences in the reform coalition on how far to push for loosening of political and social restrictions."

And control over the legislative and executive branches in Iran doesn't carry quite the same weight in Iran as it might in a Western democracy. "Political power in Iran is divided up among a number of different institutions and power centers," says TIME correspondent William Dowell. The country's highest political office is that of supreme spiritual leader, originally created for Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini after the revolution of 1979 -- although conservatives and reformers differ sharply on how much direct political control he should exercise. Ayatollah Khameini leads the country's conservative faction, whose control of the Council of Guardians -- a non-elected body of clerics that has the power to vet candidates and veto legislation -- as well as over the judiciary, security services and the military, means they will still have much political power even if they lose the Majlis. "Even though the conservative clergy dominate, they have to pay attention to the will of the people and the positions of other power centers," says Dowell. "Last summer's riotous protests against repression of dissent by the conservatives served as a sharp reminder that there's a delicate balance of power in Iran, and that Iranians when pushed too far are capable of rebellion, as they showed in 1979." Such concerns have led the clergy to approach the elections with caution. "The conservatives still claim to rule in the name of the majority of Iranians, and they're feeling pressure from the rising public reaction against their policies," says Dowell. Ironically, the mullahs may be suffering some of the consequences of their own success. Their 20-year revolution has seen Iran's demographic majority shift decisively from the countryside to the cities, while an Islamic version of women's empowerment has become a major force. The number of female students at Tehran's university grew from 25 percent in 1979 to 55 percent today. Whereas the primacy of the clergy had been an established principle in Iranian village life, the urban youth who now make up a growing plurality of the population tend to vote overwhelmingly for reformist candidates. Likewise women voters, as Khatami proved in the 1998 presidential election.

Iran's revolution financed its first decade through oil revenues, but collapsing crude prices combined with massive unemployment among a burgeoning youth population have made kick-starting the economy -- with a large dose of Western investment -- a critical priority, a fact that has moved even such stalwarts of the revolution as former president Ali Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani into the pro-Khatami coalition. That, of course, is a mixed blessing. "While Rafsanjani's influence could be a major factor in preventing a dangerous backlash by hard-liners after the election," says MacLeod, "he'd be likely to slow down the pace of political and social reform."

Keeping young Iranians on board for a patient chiseling away at the grip of the mullahs has proved a major challenge for the reformists, particularly after last summer's protests showed their mounting impatience. But the complex distributions of power and repressive instincts of the conservatives prescribe a gradualist approach among reformists. "If Iran is to complete the dizzying road from theocracy to democracy," says MacLeod, "reformers must find a way to speak to the Internet generation as well as to older Iranians who feel more comfortable with Islamic traditions and like to be assured that the reform movement remains loyal to the ideas of Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution." And this is no mere subterfuge: Khatami himself is a veteran of 1979, while the reform movement's most important ideological figure may be Ayatollah Ali Montezeir, the imprisoned liberal theologian who had once been Khomeini's handpicked successor. "Although the elections are likely to give Khatami a stronger hand to push his reform agenda," says Dowell, "the real struggle for a new Iran may be going on behind the walls of the seminaries where more and more clerics are challenging the conservatives' view of the extent of the clergy's political authority." That's a tortuous process to which ordinary Iranians can't directly contribute. But Friday's poll gives them an opportunity to send the mullahs a message.

Newsfile: Iran and its Revolution

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