Will Iran's Presidential Election Make a Difference?

The Economist:

Turnout will be low and apathy is rife, but Iran's presidency still matters quite a bit.

Disgruntled city-dwellers prepare to boycott a poll that, they fear, will only underline their powerlessness to influence the nation's destiny. READ MORE

The eight contenders elicit more comment for their grooming and dress sense than they do for their campaign pledges. The run-up to the first round, on June 17th, of the contest to replace Muhammad Khatami, Iran's reform-minded president since 1997, is generating less enthusiasm than the national football team's bid to reach the 2006 World Cup finals (which it achieved this week in a frenzy of Iranian joy by beating Bahrain).

Have Iranian elections, which the Islamic Republic once paraded as evidence that it is not a dictatorship, degenerated into a sham? It looked that way on May 22nd, when Mostafa Moin, the only well-known reformist candidate, was barred from running by the Council of Guardians, the same hardline body that disqualified more than 2,000 reformists from competing in last year's general election.

But Mr Moin was reinstated, thanks to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Never mind that his intervention may have been unconstitutional or that the ayatollah is suspicious of reform; the poll is now being contested by all major political factions—though not by women, who were disqualified en masse. Now, Mr Moin's allies say, there is no need for voters to stay away from the polling stations.

Muhammad Ghoochani, the young reformist who edits Shargh, Iran's most intelligent daily, agrees. In a recent editorial, he pointed out several happy differences between the current campaign and previous ones. The hardline judiciary is being a bit nicer to dissident journalists, satellite dishes that pick up anti-regime broadcasts are not being confiscated, and coverage by the conservative-run broadcasting monopoly has been fairly even-handed. Most important of all, Mr Ghoochani says, conservative candidates know that they stand a chance only if they speak the reformist language of “democracy, a free economy [and] the participation of women and young people”.

A stroll around Tehran, the capital, is a surreal instruction in political reinvention. In one poster, a grinning conservative, Ali Larijani, appears under a snippet of verse by a dissident poet whose prestige Mr Larijani, a former broadcasting boss with a bent for airing Stalinist “confessions” on the screen, helped destroy. Former members of the Revolutionary Guard, now seeking the presidency, play down their military records, brandish questionably learned doctorates and appear in computer-enhanced photographs that hide their pates if they are bald and their turbans if they are clerics. Job creation and national rejuvenation are favourite themes. Hardly anyone, a hardline ayatollah has complained, mentions Islam.

The spin is meant to attract a youthful electorate that has little love for revolutionary ideals but has worries aplenty about employment and prospects. The government recently announced that economic growth had dropped to 4.8% in the fiscal year to March (from 6.7 % the previous year), raising fears that there will be even fewer jobs for the 1m-odd Iranians who will enter the labour market this autumn.

Which candidate stands to benefit from this combination of jitters and indifference? The conventional wisdom is that Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who has reinvented himself as a cautious democrat since serving as president in the undemocratic early 1990s, is the front-runner, and that Muhammad Ghalibaf, a former police chief, has made inroads with expensive advertising and a support base in the Revolutionary Guard. A low turnout would increase the likelihood of a two-man second round (to win in the first, you need more than half of the votes cast); the dull Mr Moin, a former higher education minister, is struggling to get that far.

The eventual winner may find the trophy tarnished. As your correspondent's barber observed during a trim this week, “this country doesn't need a president; everyone knows who is in charge.” During his eight-year stint, the charming but ineffective Mr Khatami failed to prise away powers from Mr Khamenei and the rest of the conservative establishment. The presidency suffered as a result.

Who will really be in charge?

It is an open secret that Mr Khatami has little influence over strategic issues, such as Iran's campaign to retain its controversial nuclear programme and avoid referral to the UN Security Council for breaching the terms of its safeguards agreement under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Mr Khamenei's largesse towards Mr Moin has further underscored the clout that the supreme leader enjoys from his pedestal of unaccountability. Of the eight candidates, Mr Rafsanjani alone has the experience and influence to challenge Mr Khamenei and, perhaps, restore lustre to the office.

Some reformists regret that Mr Moin did not reject Mr Khamenei's gesture and stand aside from a flawed process. One such reformist is Iran's most famous political prisoner, Akbar Ganji. Earlier this month, after being temporarily released for medical treatment, he called on Iranians to boycott the poll and said that the supreme leader, who was appointed by a college of clerics, should put himself up for election. Mr Ganji also derides timid reformists; after the poll, he says, “they will go into a room and not raise a peep”.

To some, Mr Ganji is a hero, whose fearless exposure of extra-judicial murders that took place during Mr Rafsanjani's last tenure was the most thrilling event of the Khatami presidency. Others point to Mr Ganji's fall from grace, and to Mr Rafsanjani's comeback, to support their view that it would be folly to take on the establishment directly.

Mr Ganji argues that change cannot happen in the current system, but admits that boycotting the polls is the closest that most Iranians will come to civil disobedience. Gone are the heady days of Mr Khatami's first term, when brilliant reformists thrilled crowds and anything seemed possible. Except for Mr Ganji and a few others, the brilliant have been silenced and the reformist bandwagon has slowed, weighed down by conservatives who may not believe the slogans they utter.

But Mr Ghoochani detects a “Tehran spring” in the air. The current, odd, election campaign does illustrate some important and encouraging truths. The Islamic Republic is a slightly nicer place than it was when Mr Khatami was elected; it should carry on getting nicer, albeit slowly, whatever the result on July 17th. Second, the Islamic Republic is an ideological state in name only. The election posters tell you that its Islamist zeal has faded.

As typical, The Economist promotes the corrupt Iranian regime. They claim Iran has not confiscated satellite dishes, true, they jam the signal instead. They claim the reporting on the candidates has been even handed, but the broadcasters have dropped candidates to promote Rafsanjani. They excuse Iran's Supreme Leader's meddling in this sham election. Will the Economist ever learn?