Las elecciones presidenciales en Irán.

Wary of Protests, Khamenei Takes No Chances in Iran’s Presidential Election

By Jamsheed K. Choksy, on 12 Jun 2013

 

Manifesación anti.gubernamental en
el 2009.

Over the past 12 months, Iran’s June 14 presidential election was shaping up as a struggle among reformers, nationalists and so-called principlists, who pledge allegiance to the supreme leader’s overriding authority. However, with calls for change rising from many Iranians, including the Shiite clergy, fundamentalist ayatollahs stepped in to assist their principlist allies.

To “immunize” the “velayat-e faqih”—or “governance of the Muslim jurist,” the principle that gives the ayatollahs final say over the state—against having to reform, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other fundamentalist ayatollahs are seeking massive turnout at the polls and a strong showing in favor of a principlist candidate. They have even set up polling stations in 96 countries in an effort to project an image of Iranians worldwide supporting the outcome. Above all, they hope to avoid major protests.

Khamenei’s iron-fisted reaction to protests following the fixed 2009 presidential election tarnished the Islamic Republic’s global image. It also backfired politically when handpicked President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad split with Khamenei and the clergy in an effort to expand the executive’s power. So this time around the septuagenarian supreme leader, who calls for “vibrant participation” in the election, acted more subtly to “engineer” the vote.

House arrests of 2009 Green Movement leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi ensured they could not even register as candidates. The Guardian Council further screened remaining candidates for “belief in the fundamental principles of the Islamic Republic.” Newspapers loyal to the supreme leader emphasized that challenging the council’s decisions would be a capital offense.

The council disqualified Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei—the nationalist ally of Ahmadinejad who calls for eliminating the velayat-e faqih—as a “deviant.” It also excluded as too infirm former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who unites those seeking “political participation by all groups” and “good relations with the U.S.” Also barred were all female aspirants, although women comprise half the Iranian electorate.

The Guardian Council ultimately approved eight candidates, all of whom promised to revitalize Iran’s shaky economy. One of them—Gholam Ali Haddad Adel, tied to the Supreme Leader through marriage—dropped out without endorsing any other candidate. Another—Mohammad Reza Aref, who served under reformist President Mohammad Khatami in the early 2000s—also left the field after endorsing another reformist candidate, Hassan Rowhani.

Four of the remaining presidential candidates are principlists. Yet divergence from the supreme leader’s foreign policy emerged when Ali Akbar Velayati, who serves as a senior adviser to the supreme leader on international issues, began promising voters “reconciliation with the world.” But Velayati’s ability to engage the West has been damaged by his alleged involvement in the 1992 assassination of Kurdish-Iranian leaders in Berlin and the 1994 bombing of an Israeli cultural center in Buenos Aires. Likewise, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Tehran’s current mayor, claims he will satisfy voters’ desires to reintegrate into the global community. But he is a notorious anti-Semite who boasts of violently suppressing dissent.

The other two pro-Khamenei candidates afford no hope for change either. Saeed Jalili, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and its chief nuclear negotiator, advocates that Iran rely on its “religious principles” in order to better “resist the international community.” Mohsen Rezaei, currently secretary of the Expediency Discernment Council that advises the supreme leader, is hostile to non-Muslims and is wanted by Interpol for the Buenos Aires bombing.

Only the two remaining reformist candidates have legitimate, if ineffective, records of seeking domestic liberalization and international engagement. Rowhani, a Shiite cleric, is a member of the Expediency Council and the Assembly of Experts, but his openly stated aims of moderating the velayat-e faqih and reaching compromise with the U.S. have long been stifled by Khamenei’s cadre. Mohammad Gharazi, who served as minister of petroleum and as minister of communication over a decade ago, has been ineffective on the campaign trail and in televised debates.

With the reformist vote seemingly split between relatively unknown candidates, Khamenei and his cohort expected an easy principlist victory. However, once campaigning began, Rowhani inherited the reform movement’s backing, with supporters linking him to Mousavi, Karroubi, Khatami and Rafsanjani, the latter two of whom publicly endorsed him.

Moreover, among Iran’s 50.5 million eligible voters are 1.6 million first-time voters between the ages of 16 and 19. Indeed, Iran’s population is young—the median age is 27—and 76 percent of voters are urban, both demographic groups that tend to be more progressive than the aging ayatollahs. However, the urban population is apathetic due to past failures in seeking change. As a result, rural voters, who are older, more conservative and often prefer principlist candidates, cast 50 percent of ballots.

In order to ensure victory, the remaining principlist candidates are under pressure from fundamentalist ayatollahs to cull their ranks. Khamenei has also moved oversight of the election away from the Interior Ministry, which reports to the currently anti-clerical executive branch. Fearing electronic media will be used to mobilize protests, as in 2009, Khamenei’s appointees in the intelligence service are blocking opponents’ websites and interrupting the public’s communications. More ominously, one of the supreme leader’s representatives, Ali Saidi, proclaimed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) right to “engineer the election.”

So Iran’s presidential election is much less about which candidates have been allowed onto the ballot than it is a struggle between a clerical establishment that seeks to preserve its power and citizens who know change is essential for economic growth, social evolution and international re-engagement. It is also the IRGC’s most overt grab for elected office, as Jalili, Ghalibaf, Rezaei, Rowhani and Gharazi are all former officers.

If Khamenei and the clerical regime prevail in stifling much-needed reform through culling the candidate pool and rigging the voting process, Iran’s population will slip deeper into poverty and isolation. Iranians’ despondency at failing to reform the political system by peaceful means will rise, yet they may not possess the resources to successfully mount a violent uprising against an even more firmly entrenched theocracy. And the regime will see far less need to compromise with the world.

Jamsheed K. Choksy is professor of Iranian studies at Indiana University. He also is a member of the National Council on the Humanities at the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities.

Fuente: http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/13014/wary-of-protests-khamenei-takes-no-chances-in-iran-s-presidential-election?utm_source=Media+Roundup&utm_campaign=11a5270a6f-MR_061313&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0eddedb016-11a5270a6f-64056469