Seize chance to change Iran, say reformers
Moderate candidates beg supporters not to boycott poll despite hardliners’ iron grip on process
WHEN he rose to address hundreds of supporters inside a packed lecture theatre, the former vice-president of Iran faced an unusual challenge.
Mohammad Reza Aref did not need to worry about persuading his audi- ence to vote for him; instead his task was to convince them to vote at all.
Iran will hold parliamentary elections on Friday and the reformist movement faces an acute dilemma. Should its supporters participate in the poll even though many of their leaders have been forbidden from standing? Or should they register a silent protest by boycotting the contest — and risk handing victory to the hardliners?
Mr Aref leads a new coalition of reformists with the Herculean task of breaking the iron grip of hardliners on the Majles, or parliament.
He implored his audience at a tumultuous rally at Tehran University to come out and vote, saying they had a duty “to come on to the political scene”. Mr Aref said: “You can encourage other people as well — not only students.” He added: “Don’t go on holiday on Friday — please come to vote!” A leaflet handed out to the audience invoked the authority of Mohammad Khatami, the reformist who served as president from 1997 until 2005.
This might not sound unusual, except for the fact that the Iranian media studiously avoids printing Mr Khatami’s photograph, reporting his words — or even mentioning him by name.
Yet there he was on the front page of the leaflet, with his beaming features alongside an emphatic plea that reformists must not be “discouraged from participating in the election”.
On the face of it, there is plenty for them to be discouraged about. Hundreds — perhaps thousands — of reformists have already been disqualified from standing. Of the 12,000 candidates from every faction who tried to stand, almost half were vetoed by the hardline Guardian Council, which vets all contenders for office.
The rally in the lecture theatre was designed to raise the spirits of an audience accustomed to political defeat.
Hundreds of students — male and female — sat together, clapping along to cheery songs. Then came a powerful video, treading on one of the most sen- sitive episodes of recent times: the mass protests that followed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election in 2009.
The loser, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, has been under house arrest ever since, partly because he dared to allege the poll had been rigged. His is another name the media studiously avoids.
Yet the video opened with footage of Mr Mousavi, drawing cheers. Then came images of the protests, then of Mr Ahmadinejad, which were booed.
But the message was that reformers were not doomed to defeat. Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate, won the last presidential election in 2013.
The video showed Mohammad Javad Zarif, the foreign minister, defending last year’s agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear ambitions in return for the lifting of sanctions. The film closed with the resounding slogan: “We are coming!” After his speech, Mr Aref, 64, told The Daily Telegraph that Mr Rouhani’s victory was the “first step” and a reformist advance in parliament would be the second, after which “the further steps will be very much easier”.
At present, reformers hold only a few dozen of the 290 seats in parliament. Mr Aref avoided saying that he was confident of winning significantly more, pleading instead for the cooperation of hardliners.
Not everyone was convinced. One medical student said the trauma of 2009 had convinced him that voting in Iran was pointless. “Mr Aref is not the man who people think can change Iranian politics or society,” he said.
Another student disagreed, saying: “If we want to change society, then we have to participate in elections — there’s no other way.”