August 08, 2014
Former Majlis Speaker Ali-Akbar Nateq-Nuri says that democracy has come to Iran through elections, but that the country is missing other tools needed to make democracy function well.
Nateq-Nuri, 69, currently heads the inspection bureau in the Supreme Leader’s office. He was speaker from 1992 to 2000. In 1997, he was the establish-ment’s chosen candidate to succeed Ali-Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani as president. But, in a stunning upset, he lost overwhelmingly to Mohammad Khatami.
The state news agency reported him as saying Sunday that Iran lacks real political parties, which he said are the main tool in any democracy.
He said parties in most countries are distinguished by manifestos and platforms that lay out policies and political philosophies, while in Iran political groupings act more like tribes than parties.
He criticized both reformist and conservative groups in Iran, saying they don’t know the rules of the political game.
Nateq-Nuri complained that everywhere else in the world after a party wins an election it only changes the ministers and those directly below them, while all the specialists and experts remain in their posts. But in Iran, he complained, a new government sweeps out even the lowest employees in administration agencies.
That is true in most European states, but in the United States about 3,000 of the 1 million federal jobs are political appointments and change as a new president takes office.
The absence of political parties in Iran is a frequent criticism leveled by foreign analysts. But a far more important criticism is the absence of free and open debate in the media and the lack of transparency about what the government is doing. Nateq-Nuri did not address those points.
The Majlis is now reviewing a proposed law on parties that would replace the existing party law enacted 30 years ago. But a new law would not necessarily change the way the political system functions. Under both the monarchy and the revolutionary regimes, parties have rarely been more than the personal vehicles of the person who creates the party.
The country’s two main reformist parties—the Islamic Iran Partnership Party, formed by the brother of President Khatami to support him, and the Mujahideen Organization of the Islamic Revolution, which actually had a life apart from any one personality—were banned after the 2009 presidential election protests.