- TEHERAN -- Islamic hardliners
routed Iran's reformists yesterday as votes were counted in an election
that had been rigged before the polls even opened, thanks to the mass ban
on moderate candidates.
-
- The new conservative majority is expected to spell an
end to President Mohammad Khatami's seven-year experiment in greater freedom
of speech and loosening Islamic cultural and social restrictions - a drive
that hardliners have tried to obstruct at every turn. Ý Extended
voting hours that stretched far beyond the Friday evening deadline yielded
an unexpectedly strong turnout from an apathetic electorate. The interior
ministry predicted that almost 50 per cent of voters cast a ballot, defying
pre-election predictions that turnout could slump to 30 per cent. Nevertheless,
it is still likely to be a record low.
-
- Religious-backed parties were on course to win more than
200 of the 280 seats, dramatically reversing the reformist landslide of
2000. The outcome was widely forecast after more than 2,400 candidates,
nearly all reformists, were vetoed by a clerical council, prompting a boycott
by the main anti-conservative movements.
-
- Hardline prosecutors last week also closed down two of
the last surviving pro-reform newspapers, an office of the main reformist
party and its news website - all for reporting a critical letter by the
disbarred deputies.
-
- The conservatives were jubilant that calls for a widespread
boycott had been thwarted. The Siyasat Rouz newspaper proclaimed the result
was a victory over foreign powers that supported the reformists: "Once
again the Iranian people have defied the predictions of the foreigners."
-
- The clerical Guardian Council, which vets candidates
and validates the results, declared that by voting in large numbers Iranians
had "foiled all the plots and plans of the enemies of religion and
the nation, including the Great Satan, America".
-
- The resurgent religious parties are dedicated to a cultural
revolution that will restore the early zeal of the Islamic Republic on
the overthrow of the Shah in 1979. They have been in power for a year in
Teheran's city government and changes in the capital give a taste of what
the rest of the nation may soon face. The new mayor, Mahmoud Ahmedi Nejad,
has vowed to return the middle class to God and has appointed high-profile
allies to impose his agenda across the city.
-
- Mohammad Shajjadi, a director of films about Iranian
heroics in the trenches during the war with Iraq, has been made manager
of a drab community centre in the northern suburbs. "The middle class
and the religious people have become divided," he said. "The
opposition between these two classes must end; it is the policy of the
municipal government that we must engineer this. Leisure time and free
time are among the most important fronts."
-
- In recent years, Iran has changed greatly as its youth
- under-25s make up half the population - rebelled against Islamic strictures
such as demands that women cover their hair and bodies to avoid inflaming
male passions.
-
- However, stricter segregation between the sexes is now
on the way back. The director claims that far from stifling the people,
such measures are attractive to local residents. "For the first time,
our activities in different types of art are partitioned, even the guitar
playing," Mr Shajjadi said. "This is so that all from this society
can participate."
-
- The mayor has even banned David Beckham's face from the
city's advertising hoardings. The Real Madrid player was used to promote
an engine lubricant in Iran until the mayor decided his posters were a
distraction for the city's youth.
-
- Mr Shajjadi defended the move: "They want paintings,
the big posters, in different parts of the city to keep youngsters in touch
with the traditional values and improve their behaviour."
-
- Reformist politicians have been discredited by a failure
to force through greater changes. Even existing reformist changes, Mr Shajjadi
says, now must be reversed.
-
- "For the first time in seven years, cultural officials
in Teheran are interested in citizens' behaviour," he said. "If
we try to educate people in the right way, they will become more co-operative
citizens."
-
- Iran's clerical rulers tapped a deep vein of nationalism
and suspicion of foreign interference among many Iranians to boost the
turnout and endorse the legitimacy of the Islamic system. But the lower
turnout and reversal of results also reflected apathy and disillusionment
with Khatami's reformers as much as calls for a boycott.
-
- In the streets, Iranians greeted the election result
with indifference. Plagued by a moribund economy starved of foreign investment,
Iran is failing to cope with a population explosion. Unemployment is high
and incomes are stagnating. Imad Nemaatallahi, an engineering student,
said: "The talking will stop, the newspapers will be closed down and
we will either end up richer or there will be another revolution."
-
- Reformists accused the government of mounting a campaign
of intimidation on television and in official workplaces to flush out voters.
Opponents of the hardliners are dismayed. "The 1990s were our 1960s,
but the underground revolution was stillborn just below the surface,"
said one female Iranian official. "Now the hardliners are coming back
to shovel soil over us."
-
- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004.
-
- http://WWW.TELEgraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/02/22/wiran
22.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/02/22/ixnewstop.html
|