TEHRAN, 12 February 2004 — Iran’s President Mohammad Khatami warned his hard-line rivals yesterday they were turning young Iranians against religion and the Islamic Republic founded by Ayatollah Khomeini exactly 25 years ago.
Khatami’s government has reluctantly agreed to stage parliamentary elections next week which reformists say have been rigged to ensure a conservative majority. “Confronting people’s wishes and ignoring people’s demands in the name of religion... will only create disappointment among the young generation in the Islamic Republic and, God forbid, their religion,” he said in an impassioned speech.
Addressing tens of thousands of people at an open-air ceremony in Tehran to mark a quarter-century of Iranian revolution, Khatami vowed to continue pressing for reform in the remainder of his second term which expires next year.
“Whether I can fulfill my promises or not, whether there is strong resistance or not, I know no other way than this and I will not choose any other path,” he said. But the crowd, many of them bussed in from provincial cities, appeared largely disinterested in Khatami’s words. Many former Khatami supporters have lost faith in his perennial promises of reform. “He could have resisted more, the people were behind him but he missed opportunities,” dissident Mohsen Sazgara said of the president. “The power we had was the people, but now we have lost them,” he told Reuters in a recent interview. Khatami’s relative impotence in the face of hard-liners opposed to his efforts to promote greater democracy, justice and social freedoms in the country of 66 million has been highlighted by the recent electoral dispute.
A 12-man unelected watchdog dominated by religious hard-liners has barred more than 2,500 candidates from standing in the February 20 vote, saying they were unfit to hold office. Most of those rejected were reformist allies of Khatami, including dozens of current legislators.
Analysts say the electoral row reflects inherent contradictions in the political system created by Khomeini which tried to marry the idea of a democratic republic with that of a theocracy headed by an all-powerful supreme leader.
“In our constitution we apparently have elections, a Parliament and a president, but they are all caricatures,” said Sazgara, who was press aide to Khomeini during his exile in France, but later went to jail for criticizing clerical rule. Reflecting on the revolution, he said: “We thought we were going to have freedom, democracy, a real Parliament and human rights, but we do not.”
At the anniversary celebrations around Tehran’s Azadi Square, tens of thousands enjoyed a carnival-like atmosphere and joined in the traditional chants against the United States and Israel.
A British Union Jack flag and several effigies of US President George W. Bush were burned while helicopters tipped tinsel onto the crowd and hundreds of balloons in the national colors of red, green and white were released into the air.
Those present had no doubts about the benefits the revolution had brought. “Everything has improved since the revolution,” said Gholamreza, 44, a farmer from the northeastern province of Mashhad. “Under the shah, if we had a dispute and you had more money, you would win.”
“Now religion rules and people have more faith,” said Mohammad Davari, a veteran of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war. “If we were in this same square 25 years ago there would be boys and girls mingling. Thank God that’s not happening any more,” he said.
