A tug of war between Iranian conservatives and reformists over forthcoming elections has entered its second week running with no apparent light at the end of the tunnel, reports Rasha Saad The standoff between Iran's conservatives and reformists took a new turn when Iranian President Mohamed Khatami's political party, The Association of Combatant Clerics, threatened on Monday to boycott next month's election if the ban on reformist candidates is not lifted. The association issued a statement saying that "if urgent measures are not taken to settle the current problem, which prevents free competition between legal political views, there is no further reason for the association to take part in the parliamentary election." The crisis between the two camps unfolded last week when the powerful Guardians Council, a conservatives- dominated body, announced that it was barring thousands of candidates from standing in the 20 February elections. The council, which screens all legislation and candidates for public office and also has to validate the elections result, barred nearly half of the 8,000 who registered to stand on political and theological grounds including disrespecting Islam, treason, working against the regime, and attempting to appease the United States. Most of those barred are reformists, including around 80 current MPs whose control over the parliament for the past four years is believed to have caused immense frustration among hard-liners. The Guardian Council's move has prompted some government ministers and state governors to threaten to resign and has led dozens of liberal MPs to stage a sit-in in the Iranian parliament which has been enforced since Sunday 11. The move also prompted a warning by the reformist run Interior Ministry that it may refuse to run the election at all. On Tuesday the reformist MPs entered the fourth day of a protest fast. A threat by Iranian President Mohamed Khatami to resign, however, prompted the Supreme Guide Ayatollah Ali Khamenei last Wednesday to call on the 12-member Guardians Council to review the cases of the invalidated candidates. But the dispute is far from being settled. The Guardian Council said on Sunday it was following Khamenei's advice but would not be pressured into backing down. "For the council, it makes no difference who enters parliament," Guardian Council spokesman Ibrahim Azizi said. He insisted that the Guardian Council would "not succumb to any pressure or propaganda". The reformists are likewise defiant. The MPs have welcomed Khamenei's intervention, but have refused to end their sit-in. They said they would wait to see how the council responded. "We want guarantees of a free election with the participation of all the disqualified candidates," said reformist woman MP Jamileh Kadivar. "The sit- in will go on until then." The elections rift also reflected the depth of mistrust between the conservatives and the reformists. While the Guardian Council insisted it had no interest in trying to influence the result of parliamentary elections, the reformists accuse the Guardian Council of trying to influence the outcome of the elections so that conservatives can win back control of parliament which they lost to reformists in the 2000 elections. Reformists also complain that if a final list is only published a week or so before the elections, they will have little time to prepare a campaign. They have written to President Khatami urging him to force the Guardian Council to produce a final list of eligible candidates by 22 January, today. On Sunday, 18 reformist parties affiliated to the Second of Khordad Movement, named after the date in the Iranian calendar of Khatami's election in 1997, said in an open letter to the president they would decide on Thursday whether to boycott the election. The coalition, led by the Islamic Iran Participation Front of Khatami's brother Mohamed Reza Khatami -- who was among those barred from running in elections -- said it would make its decision based on the extent of the Guardians Council's review process. Reformists also fear that hard-liners may be seeking to split the reformist front into two camps, therefore further discrediting the reform movement -- divided into radical elements in parliament and moderates like the president who are closer to the establishment's clerical hierarchy. Deputy Interior Minister Morteza Mobalagh, who himself threatened to resign unless the council reviews its blacklist of candidates, said that another serious crisis was brewing after plans by the reformist-run Interior Ministry to computerise vote counting were rejected by the council. He also revealed that the council, which is authorised to validate elections results and has deployed its own parallel network of election observers, was insisting on carrying out its own vote count. The rift highlighted the tense relationship between the reformists and the conservatives that emerged with Khatami's election as president in 1997. The deadlock follows years of attempts by the reformist majority to introduce greater political and social freedom. These attempts have been systematically vetoed by conservative clerics. According to Kadivar, the council has been reluctant to review every bill approved by the parliament. "Many of the bills approved by parliament were rejected by the Council for reasons that we could not grasp," Kadivar told Al- Ahram Weekly . "Many of the bills formerly approved have been now rejected by the council," she added. The main bone of contention between the two camps is that while hard-liners believe that concessions to Western- style democracy could destroy Islamic rule, reformists believe the system needs to become more democratic to keep up with the demands of its overwhelmingly youthful population. The council, has used its veto powers to overturn dozens of bills passed by the reformist parliament, including an attempt by Khatami to temper its power to block election candidates earlier last year. Two weeks after the two rival camps opted for confrontation and refused concessions to solve the elections rift, observers are left clueless about the outcome. Amidst much political turmoil, described as the most crucial since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the general public does not seem to be interested in the outcome of the power struggle between conservatives and reformists. Students, the driving force behind the reform movement who last summer took to the streets in pro-democracy protests, have so far kept a distance. According to analysts, tired of seeing reformist proposals such as improved rights for women and press freedoms rejected by the Guardian Council and student protesters and journalists jailed by the judiciary, many Iranians no longer believe Khatami can institute the long- awaited reform. With political disenchantment running high, particularly among the two-thirds of Iranians under age 30, many observers expect the elections turnout to be far lower than the 67 per cent who voted in 2000. "Iranians are suffering depression because of the political environment surrounding them. We will not be surprised if the majority of the people who have supported reformists refrained from participation," Kadivar told the Weekly.
