April 21, 2017
by Warren L. Nelson
A total of 1,636 wannabe presidential candidates registered last week, but within a few days about 1,630 of them will be gone with the wind.
The question, however, is not just who will be left on the ballot, but whether the three main factions will all have their major candidates approved for the ballot.
There are clearly suspicions that the 12-man Council of Guardians, which gets to decide who goes on the ballot, is sharpening its ax with the goal of shafting those who would make it tougher for a Principleist to win.
That is why former President Mahmud Ahmadi-nejad registered last week, even though he has endorsed one of his former vice presidents, Hamid Baqai, as his faction’s candidate. In fact, several men from the Ahmadi-nejad faction registered, assuming the Council of Guardians could not exclude them all without risking a public backlash.
On the last day of registration Saturday, President Rohani filed his registration papers. But so did his first vice president, Es’haq Jahangiri, much to the surprise of reporters at the candidate registration office, who at first thought there was a rebellion brewing. Several other Rohani supporters also registered, including Mohammad Hashemi-Rafsanjani, 75, the younger brother of the late president. This indicated there was a fear that Rohani might be disqualified by the Guardians just as the Guardians disqualified former President Rafsanjani four years ago.
Multiple candidates won’t mean that Rohani will not be disqualified, but it makes it very unlikely that all moderates and Reformists would be cast aside by the Guardians.
The Council of Guardians has said it will announce the final list of approved candidates no later than Thursday, April 27. Officially, the Guardians are reviewing all those who registered to determine who is eligible. But that’s just a myth. If the Guardians worked 24 hours a day over the nine days after registration ended, they would be able to devote less than eight minutes to each registrant. If they worked 12 hours a day, they would be down to four minutes per candidate. Clearly, the Guardians will ignore the vast majority of registrants.
But since the vast majority could not be taken seriously, that is no tragedy. Only a few dozen will likely be taken seriously by the Guardians—if that many.
With multiple candidates from a faction registering, the Guardians have the option of approving many of them in an effort to strew the votes of that faction over many candidates. However, any competitors to Rohani or to Ahmadi-nejad’s choice who are approved are likely to be under great pressure to drop out, and will likely do so.
The problem is starkest with the Principleist faction, which lacks any internal discipline. It has regularly sought to reach agreement on one candidate, but has failed to do so in every election.
Four years ago, the Guardians approved one Reformist, Mohammad-Reza Aref, one moderate, Hassan Rohani, one candidate with no factional support and five Principleists. (Ahmadi-nejad’s choice to succeed him was axed by the Guardians),
Former Presidents Khatami and Rafsanjani saw Rohani as the strongest candidate and came down hard to force Aref to quit the race. The five Principleists squabbled; one who recognized he had little public support dropped out at the last minute. The other Principleists all recognized that Rohani would come in first, but they all thought they could top the Principleist list and would then face Rohani in a run-off, wining there with a unified Principleist faction.
But they were fooled. Rohani came in with 50.7 percent of the vote and there was no run-off.
Once again, the Principleist establishment—called the Popular Front of Revolutionary Forces—is trying to put forth one candidate. A Principleist convention earlier this month voted on a list of 10 possibles. The top five were all asked to register. The 10 figures who have put this system together plan to analyze which one of the five appears to be the most popular and then will anoint him and direct the other four to drop out.
It will be a considerable surprise if all four do drop out. Of course, the Council of Guardians could help out by only approving one of the five as a candidate. (One of those nominated, Mehrdad Bazrpash, who came in third at the convention, declined to register as a candidate)
Of the other four, Ebrahim Raisi, a cleric with long experience in the Judicial Branch and who is now the head of the foundation that runs the Shrine of Imam Reza in Mashhad, is widely seen today as the most appealing. The man who came in fourth, Tehran Mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, announced shortly before the convention vote that he would not be a candidate. But after he came in fourth in the balloting, he registered as a candidate. Qalibaf came in second to Rohani four years ago.
Both men are under strong attack from he Rohani faction.
A few months ago, it was revealed that under Qalibaf many properties owned by the Tehran Municipality were sold at discounted prices to Majlis deputies, Tehran City Council members and other figures. That has severely crimped Qalibaf’s appeal.
As for Raisi, his opposition is publicizing the fact that he was one of the four men who in 1988 comprised the “death committee” that decided which opposition members held prisoner would be executed and which would live. Most of those killed were members of the Mojahedin-e Khalq, the group that had just invaded Iran from Iraq with the support of Saddam Hussein. While there is little love for the Mojahedin-e Khalq among most Iranians, the mass executions have long offended many Iranians—and Grand Ayatollah Hossain-Ali Montazeri called the mass executions a “great crime” that stained the Islamic Republic. He told the four members of the committee, “History will write you down as criminals.”
Raisi’s membership on the “death committee” is unlikely to help him draw many votes. Hadi Ghaemi, the head of the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI), said, “A man who should be on trial for the most heinous crime in contemporary Iranian history is instead seeking the presidency.”
The main issue, by far, in comments by candidates has been the economy and whether Rohani has done enough. But the death committee and Tehran corruption are likely to get more than just a little attention in private discussions.
Not everyone, of course, falls within the ambit of the three factions.
For example, Mostafa Mirsalim, who was a minister of culture under President Rafsan-jani two decades ago, was nominated by the Islamic Coalition Party, which is well-organized and close to the Bazaar. He registered last week and made clear that he was not part of the Principleist organization.
Mohammad Gharazi, who was the minister of post a quarter century ago, also registered. He was an approved candidate who ran as an independent four years ago and came in last with 1.2 percent, losing even to “spoiled ballots.”
Meanwhile, a poll taken by the Toronto-based IranPoll organization showed that most of those polled have a favorable view of Rohani but also don’t see that the greatest achievement he touts—the nuclear agreement with the Big Six—has done anything to improve their lives.
A total of 1,005 Iranians were polled from April 11 to 14. Almost 40 percent said Rohani had been “somewhat successful” in resolving Iran’s economic problems. But more than half said he was either “somewhat unsuccessful” or “very unsuccessful.”
The poll, found that 72 percent of those surveyed said the nuclear deal had not improved their living conditions.
The presidential election will be held Friday, May 19. On the same day communities all across the country will elect members to their city or village council. And, in a few communities, voters will choose candidates to fill a handful of vacancies in the Majlis and the Assembly of Experts.
The Council of Guardians must approve the candidates for president, Majlis and the Assembly of Experts. But it is the Interior Ministry that decides who can go on the ballot in the city and village council elections. The ministry announced last week that anyone convicted—not just arrested, but convicted—for any actions protesting the outcome of the 2009 presidential election will be barred from the council ballots. That is a rather modest ruling by the ministry.