Iranians go to the polls today. Or they are supposed to. Some opposition politicians have called for an electoral boycott because 2,500 reformist candidates were banned from standing. Their hope is that a low turnout will invalidate a victory by the conservatives. It has been suggested that the proportion of people voting could be as low as 30 percent across the country and just 10 percent of the urban electorate. There has certainly been a low level of interest in the campaign. Nevertheless opposition hopes of claiming some sort of success from a low turnout are misplaced.
The first reason is that Iranians who want change may be tempted to vote because President Mohammad Khatami, the champion of mild reform, has urged them to do so. He has warned against a boycott. Originally fully 6,000 reformist candidates had been banned from standing by the electoral commission. The authorities later relented and reduced the proscribed list. This will have weakened the determination of some voters to ignore the ballot in protest. Khatami’s appeal for participation will have further undermined their resolve. There thus seems a good chance that the reformist electorate will be split.
The more important point is that an election win is an election win. It does not really matter how many people bothered to vote. It does not matter how thin the winning margin for the Iranian conservatives. Turnout in European elections has been falling steadily in almost every country over the last 20 years. George W. Bush won the White House on a wafer-thin — and indeed dubious — margin. Nobody questions the legitimacy of European governments. No one now seriously argues that George Bush should be removed from the Oval Office. No Western power is therefore going to dare condemn even the narrowest or lowest turnout wins by Iran’s conservatives. Whatever moral victory the opposition might claim will be negated by political realities.
Iran’s conservative rulers should also be given some credit for political savvy. The country’s economy is driving it toward wider re-engagement with the rest of the world. The agreement to allow inspection of its nuclear facilities is only the most dramatic demonstration of this. The commercial imperative is driving this change. Teheran’s bazaaris were early supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini and the conservative regime. Now they are in the vanguard of the movement for liberalization. Only the most diehard conservative elements can still imagine that they can resist the impetus for change. The almost certain victory of the hard-liners today will therefore not be taken by the government as an unreserved endorsement of their policies. It is 25 years since the revolution brought the conservatives to power. The voice of a new generation of Iranians cannot simply be ignored.
