Caging Khatami

Iran's conservatives could not find one powerful enough candidate against Mohammed Khatami in the June 8 elections. So they have lined up nine air pistols, writes Kesava Menon.

IRANIAN CONSERVATIVES could not find one candidate of sufficiently powerful calibre to put up against the President, Hojatolesslam Syed Mohammed Khatami, in the elections to be held on June 8. So they have lined up nine air pistols against him.

The conservative-dominated Council of Guardians sprang a surprise when they released the list of candidates they had approved for the June presidential poll. They did not allow a single identifiably reform-minded candidate other than Mr. Khatami to stand while they cleared as many as nine who ranged from those prepared only for marginal reforms to those who are certainly against any kind of political reform though they might pay lip service to the same. Given the interests of the conservatives, which can easily be ascertained from the record of their behaviour over the past four years, this decision at first made no sense.

For all the power that they exercise through the control of the more dominant, non-elected part of the Iranian system the conservatives know that the political momentum has been against them ever since Mr. Khatami won the presidency four years ago. The margin of their defeat in that election has been replicated in two nation-wide polls since despite their success in thwarting almost the whole of Mr. Khatami's reform agenda. It was very clear that the primary objective of the conservatives in the coming elections would have to be the reversal of the momentum. A very easy way of doing this would have been to allow at least a few credible reform-minded candidates to stand so that they could leach away support from Mr. Khatami. If the final result of the coming poll showed that Mr. Khatami obtained less than the 70 per cent, on a 90 per cent turnout, that he got the last time it could have been said that the President's position had slipped.

Iran's conservatives have displayed far more cleverness than most analysts credited them with. They probably realised that it did not really matter if the pro-reform vote was scattered among Mr. Khatami and candidates of the same mould. So long as the 70-30 gap remained between the reform and conservative camps they could not really claim to have made up any ground. One alternative that they had was to reduce the size of the turnout so that even if Mr. Khatami retained the same margin of victory it could still be made out that he drew support from a lesser number of Iranians than he did four years ago. A campaign carried out in circumstances where Mr. Khatami's victory was certain and in which there was no other candidate who could fire the imagination would certainly have been lacklustre and could have conceivably caused a low turnout. But a low turnout would also indicate that Iranians were losing interest in the system as a whole and Iran's dominant clergy have always taken pride in the size of the electoral turnout which they take as a sign of the system's legitimacy.

If the conservatives could not risk the turnout slipping far below the healthy standards of previous elections, neither could they risk a repeat of 1997. Four years ago, they had set up the Speaker of the Parliament, surely a high profile candidate, against a Khatami who had been much less in the public eye till the start of the election campaign. If they once again united behind a single candidate there was every chance that all reform- minded voters, no matter the doubts and misgivings they might have developed about Mr. Khatami in the four years, would rally behind the President. It is possible that nine candidates of a largely conservative bent are in the fray because the many factions that are broadly in line with this tendency could not sort out their differences in time.

But going by the profile of the candidates, it would appear that the Guardians have worked out an alternative strategy by design and not by accident. Each of the nine, while basically conservative in orientation, has the capacity to draw support from segments of society that have been crucial elements of the broad pro-reform movement that Mr. Khatami has created and has been able to retain despite his inability to lead them anywhere. These candidates have also pecked away at specific aspects of Mr. Khatami's failure and each has promoted himself as the person who can rectify that particular drawback.

According to most observers of the Iranian scene, the former Labour Minister, Mr. Ahmed Tavakoli, can put up the toughest fight. The evidence in support of this proposition is that he defeated the then popular President, Mr. Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, in one province when they faced off in the 1993 poll. Mr. Tavakoli has put on the line his standing as a non-clerical former Minister and has latched on to the main conservative slogan that economic development and the fight against corruption are the real issues and that political reform is a diversion.

Then there is the 44-year-old Defence Minister, Admiral Ali Shamkhani, who strikes at Mr. Khatami's reputation for vacillation and weakness by promoting himself as a man who can act decisively. The head of the Open University has thrown himself into the fray hoping to leach support from the academics and students who have been Mr. Khatami's foremost backers. There is also the head of the union of doctors who can hope to draw support from the professionals and urbanites who have stood staunchly by Mr. Khatami so far. Each of them seems certain to make inroads into Khatami territory, thereby ensuring that he cannot approach the 70 per cent mark this time around.

Meanwhile, the conservatives have pulled all the stops out in their denunciation of reform. Despite the reform movement having captured the rest of the world's imagination there is a hard core in Iran which reveres the clergy and will vote conservative irrespective of the circumstances.

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