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It was all in vain. By the end of February many of the heroes and stars of Iran's
reformist movement had pleaded for popular participation in Iran's municipal council
elections. Taking advantage of the absence of vetting by the right-wing Council of
Guardians (applied to the presidential and parliamentary elections), a long line
of reformers were running on several slates. This was perceived as yet another opportunity
to drag the conservatives in the mud of their fifth humiliating defeat in as many
years. "Death knell" would have been an apt analogy. Waking up to the windfall of winning by default, the conservatives tried to celebrate and even pound their collective chest in triumph. But everyone knew that winning by five percent of the popular vote is not the stuff of Islamists' populist daydreams. The eloquent silence of the majorities was to some extent affective. The rare valor of a dozen representatives in the parliament (most of them women) no longer seemed enough to legitimate the cause of political reform. On March 1st Iranians said no to the career moves of the usual pseudo-reformers
who have made a habit of riding the reform wave to a legislator's seat only to turn
lobbying tricks for economic and political special interests. By staying away from
the polls the reform minded majorities of Iranians did more than signal that they
would not be taken for granted. They symbolically threw up their hands and gave up
on the incompetent and pusillanimous leadership of the reform in the face of an aggressive
and hegemonic right wing. The right wing never accepted its electoral defeats. Its legal and extralegal counterattacks started shortly after Khatami's 1997 election with the arrest and trial of Gholam-Hossein Karbaschi, (the competent, reformist mayor of Tehran) and the assassination of Said Hajjarian (the leading genius of the reform politics.) In the words of one of the reform intellectuals, in its first foray, the right wing eliminated the twin symbols of modernization and modernity. Then came the summer of 1999 when the right-wing shut down three quarters of the
reformist media and brutalized the students who had demonstrated against the closures.
In the last three years the right-wing's assault has continued unabated through the
arrest and imprisonment of reformists on trumped-up charges of blasphemy, treason
and espionage as well as the systematic sabotage of the reform parliament by the
veto power of the Council of Guardians as well as an "executive decree"
of the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenie. After twenty million Iranians had reelected the reformer president, Khatami chose a cabinet that did not include a single reformer. His only firm stance at the outset of his presidency led to the arrest of the so called rouge elements of the Ministry of Intelligence that were charged with the serial murders of the dissidents. The trials of the perpetrators, however, were allowed to ground to a halt in the partisan quagmire of the right wing Judiciary. Last week, Khatami walked out of a session of the right wing Expediency Council that was fixing to usurp the prerogative of parliament and legislate a four-hundred percent budget increase for another right wing body, the Council of Guardians. Like almost anything else he can do at this point, this was too little and too late. It appears that Khatami and his lieutenants have squandered an invaluable historical opportunity to reform the Islamic Republic from within. And yet, there is no evidence that Iranians are thinking of another revolution.
Along these lines (albeit in a less religiously rebellious manner) two strident
and openly anti-Khamenie letters have been published by private citizens with good,
if dated, revolutionary credentials. Ghasem Sholeh Sadi [See: Meltdown]
and Mohsen Sazgara share Ganji's disenchantment with the current mixed constitution
of the Islamic Republic and openly call for what has been the worst kept secret of
the reform agenda: the desire to revise the Constitution of the Islamic Republic
with the aim of removing its theocratic core. They also recommended such radical
strategies as open defiance of the arbitrary "red lines" of the IRI: refusing
to participate in the routine electoral processes, selective and creative political
action and civil disobedience. Boycotting an election seems compatible with this
new spirit of defiance. Ahmad Sadri, is the Professor and Chairman of the Department of Sociology and
Anthropology at Lake Forest College, IL, USA. See Features
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