ANALYSIS: Ahmadinejad's claims about the free nature of the Iranian election are par for the course, writes ALI ANSARI
REPORTS OVER the weekend that as many as 110 Iranian reformist politicians had been arrested late at night have given further credence to suggestions that more is afoot than simple election manipulation, and that the “landslide” election victory of incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a means to a broader end.
Indeed, a question from a hardline journalist at yesterday’s press conference provided further evidence of a deeper agenda being pursued by Ahmadinejad, with the apparent full support of supreme leader Ali Khamenei.
The question addressed the letter sent last week by the hitherto powerful chairman of the Expediency Council, former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, in which he protested against lies and slander hurled against him and his family by Ahmadinejad. What was crucial in the question was the depiction of Rafsanjani as another Ayatollah Montazeri. Montazeri had been the heir apparent to Ayatollah Khomeini before serious political differences about the direction of the country resulted in Montazeri’s banishment from the political scene and house arrest for the better part of a decade.
The analogy was ominous, but does draw attention to the fact that this election was never really about the two main candidates. It was about more fundamental issues of the direction of the Islamic Republic, and whether the republican elements – severely eroded since the first controversial election of Ahmadinejad in 2005 – should be discarded altogether as an idea which has outlived its sell-by date, or whether it should actually be given a new lease of life.
Ahmadinejad’s protestations about the free and fair nature of the recent election are, of course, par for the course. They are the standard rhetoric of the autocratic populist the world over, and the events since the results were announced belie the notion of a popular politician basking in the mandate of a euphoric electorate. Even if the disturbances could be put down to “troublemakers”, it seems odd to move quickly to arrest opponents.
Surely such an election victory and popular endorsement should be security enough? This is about reshaping the country in a particular image. It can broadly be defined as conservative, Islamic and autocratic. Its foot soldiers are the seemingly pervasive pious poor who populate the Iranian countryside, inherently conservative and largely neglected. They are juxtaposed against a diffident and socially disconnected north Tehran elite.
It is a nice dichotomy, and it makes for an easy explanation, but it doesn’t bear serious scrutiny. Iran, for example, is now overwhelmingly urban (70:30), which means that elections are fought and won in the cities. Moreover, many prominent reformists do not reside in north Tehran, in stark contrast to their political opponents. But it is also a fact that the last landslide elections were won by a reformist, Mohammad Khatami, who, much to the chagrin of Ahmadinejad and his supporters, has remained a formidable and highly popular figure to this day. In other words, the “pious poor” are not the natural and automatic constituents of the hardline conservatives.
This myth of the conservative silent majority is one that we are all meant to swallow. But it has proved a difficult fact to fully digest in light of Khatami’s persistent popularity. So now we have an election, with an exceptionally high turnout, which has finally provided Ahmadinejad with more “votes” than Khatami ever achieved. With this apparent mandate, Ahmadinejad and the supreme leader will try to move quickly to consolidate their position. All will apparently be normal, while behind the scenes opponents will be arrested and/or intimidated into submission. This is, after all, about domestic hegemony.
The trouble is that the legitimacy they crave has evaded them. Far from being a fait accompli, they face a crisis of authority entirely of their own invention. The people being beaten on the streets are not members of the “north Tehran elite” who happen to be bored.
People are angry; and people feel humiliated by a government and establishment that appear to have taken their submission for granted. This is a dangerous game to play, to raise expectations and to dash them with such reckless abandon. The protests are broader – socially and geographically – than they have been since the revolution, but perhaps more important, they now include disaffected members of the revolutionary elite. If these wounds are not healed quickly and judiciously, they may not heal at all. – (Guardian service)
Ali M Ansari is director of the Institute for Iranian Studies at the University of St Andrews, and author of Iran Under Ahmadinejad