FIRST CITY COUNCIL RESULTS CONFIRMS THE DEFEAT OF REFORMISTS

By Safa Haeri, IPS Editor

PARIS First of March (IPS)The first, albeit unofficial results from the Friday elections for city councils confirms that a great majority of Iranians, mostly the young generation, have dealt a heavy blow to President Mohammad Khatami and the official reformers.
“Iranians showed that they have no definitive marriage with anyone of their leaders”, commented Mr. Sadeq Saba, BBC’s senior analyst of Iranian affairs.

The Islamic Iran Participation Front, the largest political formation that backs the powerless President suffered the heaviest blow, as some of its most outspoken and popular figures, like Mr. Mostafa Tajzadeh, a former Deputy Interior Minister and one of the “architects” of Mr. Khatami and the reformers earlier electoral victories could not make his way to the new Tehran city council.

"Resounding victory for the fundamentalists in the nationwide elections", the hard line evening daily “Kayhan”, one of the newspapers that speaks for Ayatollah Ali Khameneh’i, the leader of the Islamic Republic wrote Saturday as the initial poll exits emerged. In fact, the first results confirm the victory of a list led by Mr. Mehdi Cahmran, of the “Builders of Islamic Iran” followed by that of the “Servants of Islamic Iran”, close to former president Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

"The elections ended with a resounding victory of faithful and fundamentalist candidates in most parts of the country", the paper said, noting that the number of the voters was higher in small cities than in big ones.

Member of the executive board in charge of the elections Parvaneh Mafi told the official news agency IRNA that about 15 to 20 percent of the eligible voters in the capital Tehran took part in the second nationwide Islamic city and village council elections. Tehran's Governor, Ali-Ausat Hashemi, put the average turnout in the Friday elections in Tehran at 25 percent, while the Interior Minister, Hojjatoleslam Abdolvahed Moussavi-Lari had predicted a turnout of 70 percent of the eligible electorate, numbering four million. As many as 1,240 candidates vied for 15 seats in the capital.

But some eyewitnesses put the number of the voters in Tehran at less than 15 per cent. “There was no sign of the past huge queues at the polling stations, or of the fervour with which the Iranians would go to the polls”, observed the moderate, but pro-conservative daily “Entekhab” (Choice).

Observers also noted that besides the official reformers, the Iran Freedom Movement and the Nationalist-religious, two groups outlawed last year but that were able to present candidates for this elections, thanks to the fact that contrary to other elections, candidates for city councils are filtered by the Interior Ministry, and not the conservatives-controlled Council of Guardians.

“By witnessing the shameful operations with which many candidates used, some adding a faked title of doctor or engineer to their names, others, who lived all their life in western nations and who had come with bags full of money to carry out their mission, a woman who had trafficked her picture to make herself younger in order to appeal to hooligans, one realizes the importance of the Council of Guardian’s special Rights to oversee the competence of the candidates”, wrote “Jomhoori Eslami” (Islamic Republic), a conservative paper that belongs to Mr. Khameneh’i.

“Though the conservatives have made much better than the reformists, who had swept most of the councils in the first elections, yet one can not say that they have registered a real victory”, one analyst said, observing that while most young electors abstained from voting, the conservatives had mobilized all their forces, despite the fact that before the elections, some of their senior tenors had called for the boycott of the race.
One reason for this apathy is the poor results obtained from the first city councils in big cities like Tehran, where reformists were pitted against each other, to the point that the Interior Ministry had to close it down.

Other reason is the negative result of Mr. Khatami’s six year of presidency, during which not only he deceived millions of Iranians who in the past, voted for him and the reformists, giving them the control of both the Executive and the Legislative, but also siding slowly, but surely, to the positions of the unpopular Khameneh’i.

If one considers the Friday elections as a test for the popularity of Mr. Khatami and his reform programs, then one can say that he has lost the huge credit he used to have with Iranian voters, another analyst pointed out.

As this electoral defeat – the first President Khatami and the reformists suffered in the past six years --, the Office for Consolidating Unity (OCU), Iranian students strongest organization that until now was backing him and the reforms he promised, but failed to implement, announced Saturday that it has decided to leave the pro-reforms Second Khordad (May) Coalition Movement.

The defeat of the reformists gives way to new political formations, particularly the National Coalition of Iranians for Freedom, formed recently two outspoken critics of the present ruling theocracy and its leader in Mr. Mohsen Sazegara, a journalist and Mr. Qasem Sho’leh Sa’di, a former Member of the Majles, lawyer and scholar.

In letters to the nation, both have criticized the record of 25 years of the Islamic Republic and are calling for a referendum to able the Iranians to replace smoothly the present system with a democratic and secular one.

Mr. Sazegara was detained briefly last week and Mr. Sho’leh Sa’di, the official spokesman for the NCIF was arrest last Monday on his arrival to Tehran at the airport. ENDS CITY COUNCIL ELECTIONS 1303