IRAN:IT WAS a case of mending political fences, Iranian-style. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former Revolutionary Guard commando who had unsettled Iran's clerical establishment with his populist agenda, met Shia Muslim clergy in the southern province of Bushehr ahead of upcoming parliamentary elections on Friday.
His message: government largesse would continue to flow their way.
"Since the beginning of the revolution, it has been said that the government's contributions to the clergymen and mosques makes them part of the government," he said. "On the contrary, the contributions are the duty of the government."
The clergy is one of the key constituencies that political groups are busy reaching out to ahead of an election that some analysts believe will be a barometer of the country's domestic and international direction.
Thousands of largely liberal-minded reform candidates were barred from running in the election by the Guardian Council, a body of clerics and jurists that vets candidates for loyalty to the country's Islamic system. The council later reinstated 1,000 candidates.
"My quest for a parliamentary seat in Iran ends today," wrote one barred candidate in a recent e-mail, asking that his name not be published.
"The Guardian Council will not allow my name - along with more than 200 other candidates from [ my] district of Tehran - on the ballot on the ground that 'concrete proofs could not be made with regard to my belief in Islam and the Islamic Republic'."
Within Iran's restrictive political environment, there is still some lively debate and fierce competition between rival groups. Compared with other Middle East countries, Iran's competitive political culture resembles a representative democracy, with campaign tours throughout the country, spirited attacks between opposing camps and rhetoric tailored to calibrate public expectations.
"Now we have to prepare ourselves to be a strong minority," said Rasoul Montajebnia, of the reformist National Trust grouping, according to Iranian news agencies. "Expecting to occupy the majority of seats is not a realistic vision."
Though the Guardian Council has blocked many of the more liberal opposition candidates, Ahmadinejad's parliamentary loyalists fear a challenge by an alliance of so-called pragmatic conservatives that includes Tehran mayor Mohammed Baqer Qalibaf and former nuclear negotiators Hassan Rowhani and Ali Larijani.
Currently, Ahmadinejad is able to muster parliamentary majorities on most of his proposals and appointments. But there are signs that some members of the clerical establishment have tired of Ahmadinejad's clique, which includes other former members of the elite Revolutionary Guard who came of age during the 1980s Iran-Iraq War. Recently, news outlets close to Ahmadinejad harshly criticised Hassan Khomeini, a mid-ranking cleric and the grandson of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic. Khomeini had quoted his grandfather as having said that military figures such as those surrounding Ahmadinejad should stay out of politics.
Ahmadinejad's supporters shot back. "When the reformists were in power, you were given a brand new BMW and you were enjoying yourself in a warm sauna bath," said one pro-Ahmadinejad website. "Being the grandson . . . does not give you the legitimacy to impose your judgment." The clerical establishment jumped into the fray, shutting down Nosazi.ir, a website critical of Khomeini, and jailing its editor.
"I suspect that there is a trend that wants to create a rift between the clerical establishment and the people," former president Hashemi Rafsanjani, a powerful cleric, told worshippers at a Friday prayer gathering last month.
Billboard and media campaigning was forbidden until a week before the vote. But reformists alleged that Ahmadinejad's supporters had already begun to deploy Shia religious organisations to hand out food and money to buy votes in poor and rural areas.
All parties are banking on high turnout to show the world the Iranian system's legitimacy. Even reformists, who complain that they are only being allowed to compete for half of the 290 parliamentary seats and worry that they will win no more than 10 per cent, have ruled out calling for a boycott. "In the forthcoming election, which is a celebration of true democracy, it is important people turn out in high numbers regardless of who will be in the parliament," the conservative Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami told worshippers at Friday prayers last month.