TEHRAN, 22 February 2004 — Iran’s reformist ranks have been divided and disqualified, and their parliamentary majority appears set to be decimated by Islamic conservatives.
For the reformists, Friday’s parliamentary elections look set to prove the biggest blow in a bitter struggle to deliver greater democracy to an electorate demanding change.
And with hard-liners appearing to have rallied just enough voters to offset predictions of a mass boycott, reformists may not even be able to claim a huge moral victory in their complaints the polls were stacked against them.
Activists, who had conceded defeat days before the polls when it was confirmed that most of their candidates were barred from even standing, have already been talking of pressing on with their program in what call they “civil society”. “We have to deepen our presence in the society. We think we will be quick to come back,” asserted Mostafa Tajzadeh, a leading member of the main reformist group in the incumbent assembly, the Islamic Iran Participation Front (IIPF).
“We are going to restructure our party. We will have more exposure with the people. It is a good opportunity for us,” he told reporters in a press conference. “The disqualification of reformists is not the end of the reformists.”
The crisis has nevertheless split the movement: the IIPF and its ally, the Islamic Revolution Mujahedeen Organization, boycotted the polls, the Association of Combattant Clerics of President Mohammad Khatami chose to take part.
And reformists are also under pressure from the judiciary, with two of their newspapers — Yas-e No and Shargh — shut down last week for publishing an unprecedented attack on the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei written by the disqualified MPs.
“A confrontation with the reformists has already started: the two newspapers are closed, and they have blocked our Internet site,” said IIPF MP Ali Shakurirad.
“They have other programs for us too,” he added. “We are ready for them, we will resist these actions.” On Friday, one prominent hard-liner branded those calling for a boycott as “traitors”, and the judiciary — a bastion of the religious right — has already threatened to follow up on the outgoing MPs, who used the Majlis as a platform from which to fire off scathing attacks against powerful hard-liners.
“We think the probability is that the actions against us will increase,” Shakurirad said.
But Tajzadeh vowed campaigning to liberalize the country would continue, starting with presidential elections next year. “We have to see if they allow free elections or not,” he said.
