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Iranian legislators quit in mass protest { February 2 2004 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2767-2004Feb1.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2767-2004Feb1.html
Iranian Legislators Quit in Mass Protest
Reformers Challenge Ballot Restrictions
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, February 2, 2004; Page A11
ISTANBUL, Feb. 1 -- More than one-third of the members of Iran's parliament resigned Sunday in a mass protest against efforts by a powerful council of hard-line clerics to fix an upcoming election.
The dramatic gesture, which came as Iran began official celebrations marking a quarter-century as a theocracy, threatened to bring to a climax a standoff that has simmered for most of the last decade. The conflict pits elected officials who favor loosening the grip of clerics on Iranian life against widely unpopular hard-line conservatives in the Guardian Council who provoked the current crisis by using their oversight powers to disqualify most reformist candidates in the Feb. 20 parliamentary elections.
"They want to cover the ugly body of dictatorship with the beautiful dress of democracy," said Mohsen Mirdamadi, a reformer, in a speech on behalf of fellow lawmakers. "We have no choice but to resign."
The practical effect of the resignations, handed in sheaves to the white-turbaned speaker of parliament, was not immediately clear. Legislative rules require resignations to go into effect only after being debated. The parliament is scheduled to convene this week to discuss the issue.
The resignations, which numbered 124 by day's end, appeared to have some impact in Tehran, where the population had become increasingly disillusioned with politics. While the reformers had swept into parliament in a landslide four years ago, the slow pace of change in recent years had led many Iranians to dismiss politics as a contest between competing elites.
Three weeks of daily sit-ins by legislators at the parliament had brought the reformers scant visible sympathy among the population. Many residents, recalling hollow ultimatums in earlier confrontations with hard-liners, had doubted the reformers would follow through on their repeated threats to step down.
But Sunday's developments on the floor of parliament, broadcast live on Tehran Radio, brought an air of expectancy, at least to part of the capital.
"Today's resignation showed that they are honest and determined in their claims," said Mohammad Amin, a metallurgy student at Tehran Polytechnic. "I think that we should do our best to support them."
The Office for Fostering Unity, regarded as the most important student organization, said it would hold a protest in support of the lawmakers on the Polytechnic campus on Tuesday. Another group scheduled a meeting at Tehran University on Wednesday.
These plans indicate at least a tentative show of faith from the students, who have complained that reformers have failed to endanger their political careers while students faced beatings and arrest for protesting repression.
"The people are eager to know what they're going to do," said Sadjad Ghoroghi, spokesman for Office for Fostering Unity, which had previously called for boycotting an election it regarded as irrelevant. "The game has changed. We are now trying to make the fundamentalists delay the election for two or three months."
The resignations of the lawmakers increased pressure on members of the executive branch to follow through on their threats to step down. President Mohammad Khatami, who was elected almost seven years ago on a promise of making the religious government responsive to social and economic demands, has shown a reluctance to confront the hard-liners and has declined to accept resignation letters from several cabinet ministers, the country's 28 governors and dozens of deputy ministers and technocrats.
"I think if it starts to move to the ministers, people will take it more seriously," said a diplomat in Tehran.
But because the cabinet controls the day-to-day operations of the government, mass resignations might bring the heavily centralized country, and its petroleum-based economy, to a halt. Some analysts said that prospect is keeping senior officials from stepping down. "They see it as a national security issue," a diplomat said. Khatami, who was bedridden with back pain on Saturday, made a surprise appearance Sunday at the opening of Tehran's new international airport. The vast facility is named for the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who arrived in Tehran from exile in Paris to a tumultuous welcome 25 years ago.
"Those who are tuned to the will of the nation will survive and those who stand against the people . . . are doomed to extinction," Khatami said, according to the official news agency.
Khatami reportedly held out hope of resolving the current crisis through negotiations with Khomeini's successor as supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The top cleric appoints the members of the Guardian Council, which under Iran's constitution has broad powers to screen candidates and to veto legislation.
The last round of negotiations, however, went badly for the reformers. Among the 3,600 candidates the council barred in its first sweep were 83 incumbent reformers. In the ensuing uproar, Khamenei instructed the guardians to review the lists again, and specifically to restore incumbents.
When it released its latest list Friday, however, the council had disqualified even more incumbents, bringing the total to 87.
The new list approved an additional 1,160 candidates, but the interior minister, a Khatami ally, said the approved list ensured that conservatives would win at least half of parliament's 290 seats. He called for a postponement of the election.
"There is no real hope for this matter to be settled in a proper way," said Mohammad Reza Khatami, the president's younger brother and head of the leading reformist party, who also resigned from parliament Sunday. "Even if they allow the participation of all candidates, there is not much time left so there would be no equal opportunity for all sides to run their electoral campaign."
Special correspondent Mehrdad Mirdamadi in Tehran contributed to this report.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
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