Iran Reformists Dominate Local Council Elections

Iranians voting in the Islamic Republic’s freest elections yet delivered an avalanche of support in last week’s local balloting for reform candidates aligned with President Mohammad Khatami, according to accounts Monday in newspapers and on state radio.

Conservatives, meanwhile, appeared to have suffered their second humiliating defeat in two years. In the election’s most closely watched vote, they seemed to have been shut out of Tehran’s 15-member City Council.

Ballots from Friday’s races were still being counted. But according to one presidential advisor, reformers had garnered 70% of the seats.

That is about the same proportion that Khatami, who advocates greater social and cultural freedom and respect for individual rights, received in May 1997 when he upset his main conservative rival, parliament Speaker Ali Akbar NateqNuri.

If the trend holds true, it would suggest that Khatami’s popularity has not waned over the past 21 months, despite the many attacks his government has endured from conservatives in parliament and despite a weak economy.

“Over 70% of those elected are from Mr. Khatami’s faction. This is very good news for us, and we have very good news from Tehran--those candidates supporting Mr. Khatami are at the top of the list,” a smiling Mohammed Ali Abtahi, Khatami’s chief of staff, said in an interview at his office.

But even if all the council seats had been won by conservatives, the election still would have been an accomplishment, Abtahi said. “When you cause such a great number of people to participate [by taking local offices], they are never going to let democracy get off track.”

About 25 million Iranians voted, approximately 65% of the electorate, in races to choose about 200,000 councilors and alternatives for cities, towns and villages.

Javad Qadimi, a spokesman for the electoral commission, told the newspaper Iran that pro-Khatami candidates were en route to sweeping 12 of the 15 seats in Tehran, with independents likely to win the other three.

Leading all vote-getters was Abdollah Nouri, a close Khatami advisor who was ousted as interior minister last year by the conservative-dominated parliament, which considered him too tolerant of dissent. He was heading the pro-Khatami slate in Tehran.

A supervisory committee led by conservatives had sought to have Nouri’s name struck from Friday’s ballot. Some of the conservatives--who also dominate the judiciary and the watchdog Council of Guardians--have said they still may seek to block him from taking his seat.

“The conservatives have not adapted to our times,” said Mohammed Ebrahim Asgharzadeh, one of the 12 reformist candidates reported to have won in Tehran.

A former spokesman for the students who held American diplomats hostage from 1979-81, Asgharzadeh said his conservative opponents did not understand that Iranians have changed. They want “comfort, welfare, to smile and be considered a peaceful, civilized people,” he said, adding that the election results indicated the conservatives would lose again in next year’s parliamentary elections.

Analysts said the creation of pro-Khatami municipal councils will be a significant new weapon for those pushing for greater democracy and liberalization of cultural and political life in Iran.

Khatami has taken a step-by-step approach in many fields, such as allowing greater press freedom and pursuing a foreign policy of detente with the West, but he has been opposed by hard-liners.

Hamid Reza Jalaiepour, publisher of the independent newspaper Neshat, said that based on the election results, he believed Khatami’s power had increased.

As of late Sunday, election officials had counted nearly 10 million of the 25 million votes cast, state radio reported, quoting the Interior Ministry, which is in charge of the counting. Final results are not expected until Friday.

The pro-Khatami trend also seemed to be holding outside Tehran, according to the moderate newspaper Akhbar, which said Khatami slates led in at least 11 provinces where results were known. Even in Esfahan, a historic city in central Iran known for its religious conservatism, journalists reported that Khatami supporters had won seven of the 11 City Council seats.

About 300,000 candidates took part in the elections, which Khatami had made a centerpiece of his drive to decentralize power and bring about grass-roots democracy.