ANALYSIS: President Ahmadinejad is under pressure from reformist candidate Mir-Hussein Mousavi
THE MEN who run Tehran’s labyrinthine main bazaar, with its warren of vaulted passages and pungent alleys, have long been considered some of the most powerful in Iran.
Known as the bazaaris, they helped tip the country into revolution in 1979, and their economic and political clout, laced with a conservative outlook, has proved pivotal in Iran’s electoral twists and turns since.
The fact, then, that a stroll through the bazaar’s choked laneways reveals just as many, if not more, posters lauding President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s main rival in today’s presidential election as those featuring the incumbent himself is revealing.
“I guarantee you most of the people here have turned away from Ahmadinejad,” insists Omid (29) a carpet seller. He will vote for the president’s prime challenger, reformist candidate Mir-Hussein Mousavi, a greying architect and artist who, as prime minister for much of the 1980s, steered Iran through much of its war with Iraq.
“Ahmadinejad has the wrong policies on everything,” Omid says, reciting a litany of complaints that range from galloping inflation to the damage wrought by Ahmadinejad’s bombast on the world stage. “Life has become more difficult for us in the last four years.” Omid epitomizes two types of voter that could prove crucial to the election. Like 20 million others, he did not bother to vote in 2005. That apathy, say analysts, was a key factor in the then relatively unknown Ahmadinejad sweeping to power. Like more than two-thirds of Iranians, Omid was born after 1979 and shares some of the disaffection that characterizes many of that generation. But the under-30s make up about one-third of Iran’s 46.2 million eligible voters, making them a force to be reckoned with if they turn out to vote this time.
If the vibrant debates and impromptu street rallies that have transfixed the country for the past week are to be believed, this election has roused Omid’s generation like never before.
Iranians talk of the country’s political and public spaces opening up to an extent not witnessed since the tumultuous days of 1979. In bazaars, cafes and on street corners, the conversation is of little else but this bitterly contested race. Some of the frenzied anticipation can be attributed to highly charged televised presidential debates – a first for Iran – and campaigning marked by candidates openly accusing each other of corruption, cronyism and lying.
The capital’s leafy avenues have been gridlocked every night this week as thousands of young Tehranis took to the streets to noisily parade their allegiances to Mousavi or Ahmadinejad. Supporters of Mousavi claimed to have formed a human chain with as many as one million people linking hands the entire length of Vali Asr, the 12km thoroughfare that runs through the heart of Iran’s vast capital. On Wednesday night, in the final hours of campaigning allowed before the vote, young men and women flashed victory signs to each other as they mixed freely on the packed squares and intersections of affluent north Tehran.
Most were wearing the green that has come to symbolise Mousavi’s campaign.
Mousavi is what is known as a “Seyed” – a descendant from the Prophet Mohammed – and his campaign’s appropriation of the green associated with Islam has a particular resonance in Shia Iran. Some carried posters of Mousavi with his wife Zahra Rahnavard, an accomplished academic and artist whose groundbreaking role in the campaign – she frequently accompanied her husband on the hustings – led some to refer to her as Iran’s Michelle Obama.
The posters showed the couple holding hands at a rally, an image that caused quite a frisson in Iran when it was first published.
“Ahmadi bye bye,” the Mousavi campaigners sang, decked in emerald ribbons, headscarves, bandannas and T-shirts. Some chanted “Death to potatoes!” – ridiculing Ahmadinejad’s practice of donating sacks of potatoes to impoverished supporters. Others shouted “Doctor, go to the doctor!” – a popular dig at Ahmadinejad’s doctorate in traffic management. Several young men danced on the streets to loud Iranian pop, while women with green face paint cheered them on.
They traded barbs with Ahmadinejad supporters weaving their way through the traffic on motorbikes and scooters festooned with the colours of the Iranian flag, which has become the incumbent’s campaign trademark. His campaigners were out in force in Khorasan Square in Tehran’s poorer southern district, where they distributed posters and flyers depicting Ahmadinejad praying, dining with a family in rural Iran and comforting an elderly man – all designed to reinforce his image as a devout and humble champion of the downtrodden.
It is an image that has played well for the president in the past, and he is relying on it now to stay in power. His campaign has also focused on Iran’s nuclear programme, a source of national pride for most Iranians, and his refusal to give in to international demands for its curtailing.
Back at the bazaar, sisters Maryam and Marjane defy the dismissive looks of Mousavi-supporting merchants who eavesdrop on our conversation to explain why they will both vote for Ahmadinejad. “He has done everything for the people of the small towns and villages. He is with the poor,” says chador-clad Marjane (27) as one bazaari hisses: “Why are you voting for that man?”
Maryam (24), a chemical engineering student, argues that Ahmadinejad is a strong leader. “He has brought us nuclear power and he has shown Iran’s strength to the world.” A few stalls down, Majid, a carpet seller, agrees. “He is a strong man and that is what we need. He takes care of those who struggle.” Ahmadinejad’s critics charge that his populist redistributive economic policies have been disastrous for the country. Official figures put inflation at 24 per cent and unemployment at 12.5 per cent. Iran has seen its national income plummet since oil prices began falling last year.
Mousavi’s pledge to liberalise the country’s ailing economy has become a cornerstone of his campaign, and he has also promised greater social freedoms. Both chime with Hussein (35): “I believe in Mousavi’s economic analysis and I like the fact he doesn’t want to interfere in people’s personal lives.”
About 475 people, including 42 women, applied to run for president, but the senior clerics of the Guardian Council, who vet all prospective candidates, approved only four men to contest the election.
The other two are Mehdi Karroubi, a former parliamentary speaker, and Mohsen Rezaei, once a commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Many Iranians believe the election will end without an outright winner – one that garners more than 50 per cent of the vote – triggering a run-off between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi on June 19th. Much depends on the level of turnout, and where.
In ominous remarks obviously aimed at the exuberant Mousavi supporters, a senior member of the Revolutionary Guards warned that any attempt to seek a “velvet revolution” in Iran would be “nipped in the bud”.
But little can dampen the enthusiasm of people like Mahnaz and her friend Behnaz, both psychology students, as they walk past the gates of Tehran University, crucible for much of Iran’s revolutionary fervour in the late 1970s. “Mousavi promises the freedom we have been waiting for,” says Behnaz.