Khamenei moves to rein in hawks

By Kesava Menon

MANAMA (BAHRAIN), MAY 20. Iran's supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has ordered a conservative-dominated election supervising body to declare the result of the Parliamentary election to the 30 seats from Teheran. This should put an end to the most immediate contest between the conservatives and the reformers. It could also mean that the conservatives will now be directed to wage a rearguard action to preserve as much of their interests as they can instead of trying to reverse the massive popular mandate against them.

The conservative-dominated Council of Guardians had promised to declare the results of the first round polling for the 30-seat Teheran constituency on Thursday. Like their counterparts elsewhere in Iran, Teherans voters had cast their ballots in the first round on February 18. The Interior Ministry, which counts the votes in the first instance, had declared that 29 of these seats had gone to pro-reform candidates with the last going to the conservative-standard bearer, Mr. Hashemi Rafsanjani. However, the Council, which has the final say, insisted that there were large-scale discrepancies in the Teheran vote and refused to validate the Interior Ministry's verdict.

A second round of polling was held for seats in respect of which no candidate had got the requisite number of votes in the first round to qualify for Parliament (ie. 25 per cent of the vote) on May. 5. But even though pro-reform candidates swept this round just as they had the first round, the Guardians continued to withhold the Teheran result. It was amid the fear that they would withhold the Teheran result till Parliament convened later this month that the Guardians announced that the result would be made final on Thursday.

Meanwhile, the Teheran ballots had been counted at least three times but there were mixed reports about the results. Some reports, probably emanating from Interior Ministry sources, indicated that after 90 per cent of the ballots had been counted, only a small proportion of the votes had been found to be invalid. However, till Thursday afternoon, the Guardians let it be known that electoral malpractice had been far more widespread. It was at this stage that Ayatollah Khamenei intervened and ordered the Guardians to declare the Teheran result on the basis of those ballots which had been cleared after the recounts. He also said it ``would not be in the best national interest to continue checking the rest''.

The Guardians have shown a remarkable propensity for brazenness and there can be no final word on the Teheran result till they have uttered it. However, the general expectation is that the Guardians will finally go along with the last assessment from the Interior Ministry and declare that about 90 per cent of the votes are valid. Since the seats are allocated on the basis of the number of votes cast for each candidate, most of the 30 seats should get through while repolling will have to be held in respect of the remainder. The Teheran results are crucial for the reformers. Candidates who contested from the city provide the core of the reform groups' leadership. They will be the main representatives on the presiding council of Parliament and one of them will the leading contender for Speaker. If they had been kept out of Parliament by the Guardians' machinations, the reform movement would not be able to make much headway in the legislature.

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Section  : International
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