The Iranian Elections: The Appearance of Democracy

Iran goes to the polls on Friday, and will find an assortment of individuals to pick from who have been approved by the Islamic establishment in that country. The presidential incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad faces two reformist candidates in the form of former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Musavi and former parliament speaker and cleric Mehdi Karrubi, along with conservative contender, the war hero and news website founder Mohsen Rezai.

The electoral campaign has proven vicious. Political activity has been frenetic. The internet is abuzz with posted messages of wisdom, promises and you tube clips. There have been televised debates for the first time, with each candidate allocated 40 minutes. (Ahmadinejad, not to be outdone, gave himself an extra 45 minutes on June 10 to counter his opponents.) The irresistible conclusion to reach here, something endorsed by such Iran watchers as Washington-based Rasool Nafisi, is that Iran’s democratic process is not merely in embryo, but growing apace.

Other students of the Iranian political process tend to disagree. According to Reporters Without Borders, journalists unsympathetic to the incumbent have been repeatedly harassed. Arbitrary arrests and harassment have dotted the landscape. Previous elections have also been characterized by interference by the Interior Ministry and Guardian Council.

Another crucial problem lies in the pre-selection process for the candidates overseen by the ever watchful, faction ridden Guardian Council. The Council has a constitutional right of ‘approbatory supervision’ which has proven to be a considerable nuisance to the democratic process, nullifying choices in favour of the status quo. Given the views of six senior clerics and six Islamic jurists, the choices aren’t ever allowed to get out of hand.

Secular candidates, women, and those out of step with the revolutionary values of the Islamic state tend to be disqualified from running. Karrubi has gone so far as to claim that the Council has even disqualified those with good revolutionary credentials, demonstrating yet again that yesterday’s revolutionaries are today’s undesirables. ‘It deprives so many people of their basic rights, including the wife of [a martyr] who was deprived in participating in the vote, and dozens of others.’

Even then, choices can only be made from present or former members of the Iranian establishment. The Council has done its worst, disqualifying 475 individuals, amongst them former legislators and women, from the race. Such elections will be an essentially rump contest.

The voters have much to be concerned about. Property prices have fallen, some say up to 40 percent in certain parts of Teheran. Unemployment persists in being a sore for the economy, hovering around 10 percent. And the receipts from oil revenue in the world’s fifth largest exporter of it have inevitably fallen with a significant decline in the price of crude. The impact of sanctions imposed through the United Nations and the United States since 2006 have been dismissed as negligible in many Iranian circles, though it has become a rather expensive affair to do business within the country.

Inflation has proven rampant, peaking at nearly 30 percent in October 2008 from 11 percent in 2005. The rate was reined in by stricter monetary controls under the now replaced Central Bank governor Tahmasb Mazaheri. Ahmadinejad does not see aggressive monetary and fiscal policies as the cause of this, putting it down to rises in global food and energy prices.

Whatever happens with the choice of candidates tomorrow, Iranian nationalism will not be dimmed, and the West will have to deal with what it has. Iranians may disagree about much, but the pride and place of its position in Middle Eastern politics is irrefutable. And that, it would seem, will include the continuation of the nuclear program, peaceful or otherwise.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com

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