Violence Ahead of Iran Elections
By Anwar Faruqi
Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, February 24, 1999
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- A gunman opened fire on a moderate party's election
headquarters Wednesday as reformers and hard-liners bickered over candidates
in Iran's first local elections in 20 years.
Witnesses said there were no casualties in the attack, in which a passenger
on a motor scooter sprayed bullets at the Servants of Construction offices
in Tehran. Dozens of volunteers were inside at the time. The gunman and
driver escaped.
The shooting highlighted the tensions before Friday's polls, which
pit supporters of reformist President Mohammad Khatami against his hard-line
rivals in the Islamic government.
The electoral supervision board, which is dominated by hard-liners,
disqualified about 50 candidates, nearly all of them well-known moderates,
on Sunday.
But the Interior Ministry, controlled by moderates, called the disqualifications
illegal and urged candidates and voters to ignore them, newspapers reported
Wednesday.
``The election is very confusing. We don't even know what these councils
are supposed to do,'' said Rasoul Sedaghat, a 59-year-old retiree.
``Besides, they are still fighting over who can run and who can't,''
he said. Like many Iranians interviewed, he said he was not going to vote.
Because it is the first time Iranians are choosing municipal officials
since the 1979 Islamic revolution, no one quite knows the rules. Both the
Interior Ministry and the Central Supervision Board, made up of Parliament
deputies, claim they have the right to supervise the polls.
Following the Interior Ministry move, Ali Movahedi Savoji, the head
of the supervision board, threatened to nullify votes in Tehran if the
12 disqualified candidates from the capital are allowed to run, the Iran
Daily reported.
Hard-liners have been blamed for a wave of violence, such as attacks
on newspapers, moderate officials and pro-democracy demonstrations. The
hard-line intelligence minister resigned this month after his ministry
disclosed that rogue agents were behind the killings of five dissidents
and intellectuals last year.
Nationwide, about 330,000 candidates, including 5,000 women, are running
for more than 200,000 posts to manage local government affairs in cities,
towns and villages. Nearly 40 million people are eligible to vote.
Former Interior Minister Abdollah Nouri, among the candidates disqualified,
believes the elections are important even though the Constitution gives
municipal councils little power.
``This is the beginning of the way for the councils. Naturally, once
the councils start work, they can take all executive tasks of the country
in hand,'' he said.
Khatami's landslide victory in the May 1997 presidential elections
came from the Iranian voters' desire for loosening the strict social controls
imposed by the clerical government.
Now hard-liners fear that Khatami's supporters will carry that view
to the municipal polling booth as well.
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