February 14, 2000. Copyright 2000. Graphic News. All rights reserved.

SPLITS THREATEN REFORM IN IRAN

LONDON, February 14, Graphic News: CRUCIAL general elections in Iran on February 18 will see reformers seeking to wrest power from the conservative dominated parliament.

Moderate and leftist Islamists, already successful in municipal elections, hope to give President Mohammad Khatami a mandate for his reform programme, although they claim that an unacceptable number of their candidates have been disqualified by the mainly right-wing Council of Guardians who oversee the poll.

IranÕs electoral system is a qualified version of proportional representation with 6,083 candidates, including 513 women, competing for 290 seats in the newly expanded parliament.

President Khatami heads the Islamic Iran Participation Front, a coalition of 224 candidates from 18 different groups. Victory for Khatami is crucial if he is break the conservative grip on parliament, the judiciary and the armed forces, which has largely stymied his reform programme since his 1997 landslide victory.

The Khatami ticket targets the youth vote Ð 60 percent of IranÕs 63 million population is under 25 Ð by offering a free press, a judiciary that stays out of politics and legal system that respects citizensÕ rights under the banner ÒIran is for all IraniansÓ.

Pro-Khatami campaigners say this package of social, legal and political change will realize the promise of the 1979 Islamic revolution and create a true Muslim democracy.

The group headed by former president Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani calls itself Kargozaran or Servants of Construction. Its candidates claim to be ÒmoderatesÓ, advocating a free market and less dramatic social change. This, they argue, is a more practical way of moderating parliament.

The staunch conservative rival, the Coalition of Followers of the Line of the Imam and the Leader, has listed 240 candidates from 15 member groups.

When they can get a platform Ð a rally at TehranÕs Nur mosque last week attracted fewer than 50 supporters Ð they warn that a reformist victory could result in sacrificing Islamic values. Expanding citizensÕ rights, they say, means legalizing immorality and desecrating the legacy of Ayatollah Khomeini. The fight against high unemployment and inflation must come before political change.

ÒThe conservatives have tried all their tricks to hamper the success of the reformists, but now they have no more cards to play and we will win the majority,Ó said Participation Front leader Mohammad Reza Khatami, brother of the president.

If the reformists gain a majority one of their first targets will be the Council of Guardians, the body of conservative clerics and jurists that supervise elections and screen candidates; they disqualified 576 applicants, predominantly reformists from FridayÕs election.

Another target for reform is the Expediency Council, the body that has the final say on all legislation. 

Although calls to limit western culture have little appeal to voters under 30, and Iranians can vote from age 16, the Participation FrontÕs inability to unite may still lose them that landslide.

/ENDS
Sources: Reuters, Associated Press