Elecciones en Iran
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Irán: los clérigos se imponen en las elecciones parlamentarias
El viernes pasado Irán tuvo sus elecciones parlamentarias. Hablamos de la primera elección nacional iraní desde que, en el 2009, un fraude grosero consolidara a Mahmoud Ahmadinejad como presidente de Irán; provocara enormes protestas populares, que fueron ahogadas a sangre y fuego; y terminara con los líderes reformistas (los llamados "verdes") en la cárcel (esta es la situación de Mir-Hossein Moussavi y de Mehdi Karroubi) o con un prolongado arresto domiciliario.
Los clérigos iraníes transformaron esta vez el deber de votar en una obligación religiosa de los ciudadanos, para asegurar una mínima concurrencia. Y aparentemente lo lograron.
Estas fueron elecciones a través de las cuales la teocracia procuró robustecer su legitimidad interna y externa. Buscaron una suerte de aprobación para su peligrosa política nuclear y para el desafío que llevarla adelante en la opacidad supone, respecto del resto del mundo. Tuvieron lugar en medio de una delicada situación económica doméstica, que tiene preocupada a la población iraní. La inflación es hoy del 22% anual (en guarismos oficiales, mientras que en las estimaciones privadas ella es de más del 26%). La desocupación es altísima, del 26%. Ocurre que las sanciones económicas internacionales han comenzado a paralizar al sector energético iraní, vital para el país. Hoy el subsidio que cada iraní recibe por mes, de unos 37 dólares, apenas permite a la enorme mayoría de los iraníes sobrevivir en un clima de pesimismo respecto del presente y preocupación sobre el futuro.
Los clérigos iraníes transformaron esta vez el deber de votar en una obligación religiosa de los ciudadanos
Como si ello fuera poco para inquietar a la población, los rumores de posibles ataques aéreos contra las instalaciones nucleares iraníes han aumentado. El propio presidente norteamericano, Barack Obama, acaba de confirmar que esos ataques son efectivamente una opción para su país, cuyo objetivo estratégico es el de impedir que Irán se transforme en una potencia militar con bombas atómicas. Opción de último recurso, dijo, pero opción al fin.
Unos 3.400 candidatos, todos ellos conservadores, compitieron por tratar de obtener alguna de las 290 bancas parlamentarias del Majlis. Ese es hoy el nombre de un poder legislativo unicameral. El Majlis era, cabe recordar, la antigua cámara baja iraní. Cuando los clérigos suprimieron el Senado, quedó entonces como cámara única.
Los reformistas (moderados), a los que se birlara la elección presidencial de 2009, curados de espanto boicotearon las elecciones, en cuya transparencia obviamente no creyeron.
La gente concurrió a votar en medio de una lucha sorda por el poder entre fracciones no conservadoras sino fundamentalistas. Todas caracterizadas por la intransigencia.
Algunos de los candidatos de Ahmadinejad fueron previamente vetados, lo que se interpretó como una señal adversa a las posibilidades del presidente. Porque, luego de haber sido apoyado por el líder supremo, el Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, en el 2008/9, Ahmadinejad es hoy su adversario político, desde que cuestiona solapadamente el principio de Velajat-e-Faqih, que postula la superioridad de lo religioso por sobre lo político y consagra el liderazgo supremo del Ayatollah Khamenei.
Los conservadores estuvieron divididos esta vez en tres movimientos. Todos caracterizados por la intolerancia
El propio Khamenei había ya instruido al Parlamento a que recortara progresivamente las facultades de la presidencia, según algunos con el objetivo final de que en más no sea un cargo electoral, sino una mera designación suya. Para así concentrar, hegemónicamente, todo el poder en sus propias manos.
Los conservadores estuvieron divididos esta vez en tres movimientos. Todos caracterizados por la intolerancia. El "Frente Unido Fundamentalista", que reunió a los partidarios del Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, con posturas muy críticas al gobierno de Ahmadinejad, particularmente en lo económico. El "Frente para la Estabilidad de la Revolución Islámica", conformado por los líderes religiosos y políticos más radicales y fanáticos, encabezado por el extremista y ambicioso Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, que apoyó al Ayatollah Khamenei, pero no a Ali Larinjani, el presidente del parlamento a quien quiere reemplazar con un candidato propio. Y, finalmente, el "Frente del Monoteísmo y la Justicia", compuesto por quienes, en cambio, apoyan al presidente Ahmadinejad.
A estar a los resultados parciales, los clérigos parecen haber derrotado ampliamente al presidente Ahmadinejad. Tan es así, que su propia hermana, Parvin, que se desempeña en el Consejo Municipal de la ciudad de Teheran (también en Irán funciona el nepotismo), fue derrotada en su ciudad natal, Garmsar. Su sueño de ser parlamentaria no pudo ser.
Para Ahmadinejad esto supone que, si nada cambia, sus posibilidades de ser reelecto una vez más el año próximo han comenzado a desvanecerse. Y podría haberse iniciado una etapa dura de ocaso político en la que se procure transformarlo en una suerte de chivo emisario. Deberá ahora luchar por su supervivencia. Para el aliado y amigo de Hugo Chávez, malas noticias, queda visto. Irán -el país que más odio siembra sistemáticamente en el mundo y el mayor exportador de violencia- puede haber comenzado ya una nueva etapa, de renovada aspereza..
Elections in Iran Favor Ayatollah’s Allies, Dealing Blow to President and His Office
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
Published: March 4, 2012
BEIRUT, Lebanon — With the bulk of seats decided in Iran’s parliamentary elections, it appeared on Sunday that the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has gained the ironclad majority he needed not just to bring the country’s president to heel, but to eliminate the position entirely.
Abedin Taherkenareh/European Pressphoto Agency
A poster of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is expected to consolidate power after last week's elections.
Ayatollah Khamenei has jousted repeatedly with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — as well as the two previous presidents — so the supreme leader secured this majority at Mr. Ahmadinejad’s expense.
The ayatollah will seek “to eliminate the post of president,” said Aliakbar Mousavi Khoeini, a former reformist member of the Parliament now living in exile in the United States.
“If they can get that, they will not hold the next presidential election; instead, Parliament will chose a prime minister,” he said. “Then Khamenei will essentially have everything he does approved and pushed through Parliament by his allies.”
Ayatollah Khamenei suggested last October that Iran would be better off governed under a parliamentary system in which the prime minister was chosen from members of the 290-seat Parliament. Under Iran’s byzantine electoral system, most reformist candidates were barred from running in last Friday’s election, essentially creating a contest between the two main hard-liner camps.
With 90 percent of the districts counted, Ayatollah Khamenei’s allies had won about 75 percent of the 200 seats in those districts, according to Press TV, Iran’s state-financed satellite channel, quoting the Interior Ministry.
The headline in Kayhan, the newspaper closest to the supreme leader, read, “Principalists win big.”
The Principalists are the coalition of Khamenei supporters. There are no real political parties in Iran, only murky, shifting alliances of political figures, but even the 30 seats so far headed toward a runoff election could not dent Ayatollah Khamenei’s majority. Full results are expected Monday or Tuesday, and runoff elections by next month.
The outcome, which could drastically reshape the domestic political landscape, is not expected to affect foreign policy. Ayatollah Khamenei has long pushed a confrontational stance toward with the West, particularly over Iran’s nuclear program, which is popular at home and accepted as being for peaceful purposes.
The government had repeated endlessly that a big election turnout would send a truculent message to the West at a time of heightened international tension over the nuclear program. The Interior Ministry announced a national turnout of 64 percent, prompting self-congratulation from the government.
The Foreign Ministry issued a statement on its Web site saying that by turning out in droves, Iranians “especially in this sensitive historical era, have shown that, despite all of the conspiracies, pressures, and sanctions, and the bleak portrait painted by the media of global arrogance, they will continue defending independence and the national interest.”
Noting that in previous parliamentary elections the turnout was only slightly higher than 50 percent, opposition figures questioned the Interior Ministry figure. They noted in particular that many reformist supporters had stayed home, protesting the continued house arrest of Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hussein Moussavi, leaders of the pro-democracy Green movement during the tumult of 2009.
Since the ruling mullahs had portrayed the vote as a religious duty, and since some Iranians might have voted to signal their dismay over a possible military attack on Iran, it is possible that that turnout was higher than usual, said Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, another former lawmaker living in exile, “But I don’t believe their turnout figure is correct.”
The Green movement, which demands a more transparent democracy, mushroomed in the wake of the contested 2009 presidential elections. These were the first national elections since then, but the violent suppression of that movement largely ended public protests. Also, foreign correspondents, who had once been allowed to roam freely during elections, were bused to specific polling places this time, and the government limited the number of visas issued to journalists seeking to cover the election.
A few bellwether constituencies indicated the shape of the election’s outcome. A Khamenei relative and ally, Gholamali Haddad Adel, came in first in the voting for 30 hotly contested seats in Tehran, according to results from the Fars news agency. Mr. Ahmadinejad’s sister Parvin lost in her home province of Garmsar, Mehr news reported. Khamenei loyalists even did well in rural areas and provincial cities where Mr. Ahmadinejad’s populist message once resonated, news reports indicated.
Elections in Iran Favor Ayatollah’s Allies, Dealing Blow to President and His Office
Published: March 4, 2012
(Page 2 of 2)
Ayatollah Khamenei is not expected to try to eliminate the presidency until Mr. Ahmadinejad’s second term expires in June 2013. “Ahmadinejad is an unpredictable maverick, so it’s not in Khamenei’s interests to make him feel totally humiliated,” said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran analyst and often sharp government critic at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
But Parliament, which had already demanded that Mr. Ahmadinejad appear to answer policy questions, will have a mandate to ride herd on the president much more closely.
“Ahmadinejad will be much weaker,” said Mr. Mousavi Khoeini, the former reformist lawmaker now living in exile. If Mr. Ahmadinejad tries any of his “antics,” he said, like his attempt last spring to fire the intelligence minister, a Khamenei ally, then “Khamenei has the leverage to respond very strongly and swiftly now.”
There has long been an inherent tension in the Constitution between the post of supreme leader and that of president. It was not an issue under the founding revolutionary patriarch, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, because his word was basically considered divine law. But Ayatollah Khamenei possesses weaker religious credentials, so he has to outflank his rivals in the presidency by using his control over the security services, the military and the media.
He has evidently tired of the constant tug-of-war, as well as the messy unpredictability of presidential races that automatically created a competitor and spawned the protest movement that threatened the Islamic Revolution.
“We could not have had any other result because Khamenei is going to run the country himself,” said Nooshabeh Amiri, a founder of Rooz Online, a news site.
Mr. Haddad Adel is expected to be elected Parliament speaker again. The current speaker, Ali Larijani, is a Khamenei ally, but he has differed with the supreme leader publicly and is not considered loyal enough, analysts said.
Mr. Haddad Adel has been speaker before and claims a family advantage. He is the father-in-law to Ayatollah Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba, who ran the Parliament election campaign for his father’s allies and is considered Ayatollah Khamenei’s enforcer.
The next year, with Mr. Haddad Adel as the helm, Parliament is expected to eliminate the post of president and elect its speaker as prime minister.
“You cannot have so many kings in one country.” Mrs. Amiri said.
.GIF)
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