Reformers Have High Hopes as Iran Holds Local Elections

It was election day Friday at the Ghadiya Mosque in northern Tehran, and excitement was in the air.

On one side of the bustling polling station, men smiled broadly as they deposited folded ballots into the voting box. On the other, a clutch of women in scarves and black chadors craned their necks to read the list of 4,200 candidates in the capital before writing in the names and numbers of their choices.

At this same mosque 21 months ago, the line of voters snaked out onto the pavement as Iranians turned out in record numbers to elect underdog cleric Mohammad Khatami as Iran’s new president--turning the country onto a path of increased openness and freedom.

This time, the mood was almost as electric as Iranians lined up to choose their first democratically elected city councils.

The elections were the most open in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and many people were seized by a desire to give the moderate Khatami a second powerful mandate in his ongoing battle with the country’s conservative forces.

“I feel that I am participating in the future,” said 50-year-old civil servant Parvin, a fringe of graying hair spilling out from under her head covering, after casting her vote for pro-Khatami reformers.

Pulling a caramel from her pocketbook, the woman, who only gave one name, offered the candy to a reporter.

“This is the symbol of my happiness,” she said, smiling at her teenage daughter, who also voted a pro-Khatami line.

Across Iran, nearly 40 million people were eligible to participate in the elections for city, town and village councils. About 330,000 people are running for 200,000 seats in the elections that were promised in Iran’s 1980 constitution but never implemented until now.

Khatami’s supporters see the councils as a potential new power base from which to resist the conservatives--who now dominate parliament and the courts, as well as the army and security services.

“These elections are a major departure,” said Tehran publisher Mohammed Ghaed, who called the balloting “the starting point of a new Iran in which you have grass-roots democracy coming from the ordinary man.”

Enthusiasm has been running high: At weekly prayers in Tehran last week, youths ignored police orders and kept handing out campaign literature even during the sermon.

By law, campaigning lasted only one week, with newspaper ads, election meetings and hundreds of thousands of flyers, posters and placards affixed to walls, windows and trees or hung from highway overpasses, where they dangled like holiday ornaments.

Turnout appeared brisk to heavy in most places Friday. Polls opened at 8 a.m., and the eight-hour period of voting was extended twice, first from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., and later to 9 p.m., to accommodate latecomers.

Authorities promised results after 48 hours, but many political analysts said a trend in favor of Khatami and the reformers should be evident by today.

Khatami himself voted at the mosque next to the modest house of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the Islamic Revolution. Looking relaxed and confident in black turban and gray and black robes, he consulted a handwritten list he had brought with him as he filled out the ballot.

Afterward, standing in front of Khomeini’s portrait, Khatami explained the vote as the centerpiece of his drive to decentralize authority and empower ordinary people.

“This is a symbol of our political development,” he said. “The government is proud to cede some of its power to the people, and we hope that the representatives that will be elected this day will be able to solve the problems of our people.”

The electoral battle was fought most keenly in Iran’s large cities, especially Tehran, which will elect a 15-member council from a startling 4,200 candidates.

Unlike other elections, clerics represented only a small portion of the hopefuls. Many candidates were business executives, entrepreneurs or professionals.

One of Khatami’s closest advisors, Abdollah Nouri, led the reformist slate expected to do well in Tehran.

Nouri was ousted from his post as interior minister last year by the conservative-dominated parliament. If he and other reformers and moderates win, they will control a new power base to assist Khatami with reforms.

“Psychologically, it would be a very big help for Khatami supporters that would strengthen their hand,” said Nasser Hadian, a political scientist at Tehran University.

However, too great a victory by the reformers could produce a backlash by the conservatives that could affect next year’s all-important general elections to the Iranian parliament, known as the Majlis, Hadian warned.

“If they [the conservatives] feel that in a fair election they cannot keep the Majlis,” he said, “they may try to use other means, not playing according to rules of the game, in trying to limit the chances of the moderates.”

That could result in conservatives trying to restrict ballot access by “disqualifying candidates on a more massive scale,” he said.

Unlike other elections in the Islamic Republic, the candidates for Friday’s local elections weren’t screened by the hard-line Council of Guardians, which traditionally has approved only those candidates it deems worthy to hold office on grounds of religious knowledge and ideology.

This time the screening was done by administrative committees, and in a compromise withKhatami’s government, the criteria for accepting candidates were much broader.

More than 5,000 women were among the candidates to represent 730 cities and towns and 40,000 villages. In most places, the councils will in turn elect mayors.

Although Khatami did not campaign for any specific slate, he did urge a big turnout--a move seen as helpful to the reformers in a country where more than half the population is under 25--and insisted that the voting take place “without undue restrictions on those who want to run.”

Most of the attention was focused on Tehran, where the well-organized slates of reformers fought head-on with conservative alliances such as the Assn. of Combatant Clergy for seats on the capital’s council.

Although the concept of democratically elected municipal councils has been on the books for 19 years, no elections were ever held, at first because of Iran’s 1980-88 war with Iraq and later because the clerics running Iran had little use for popularly elected bodies.

That changed with the election of Khatami, who has championed giving more rights to ordinary Iranians and has often invoked slogans calling for adherence to the constitution and respect for the rule of law.