March 20, 2016
by Warren L. Nelson
So who really won the Majlis elections last month? The only honest answer is that no one really knows yet.
The accompanying table shows the figures published by nine different news organizations. And these figures are all over the horizon.
The first problem in assigning Majlis deputies to factions is that Iran has no real parties. These are not even movements; they are merely tendencies.
In most countries, parties exercise discipline over their members, often by providing them money for campaigning and denying funds if they don’t tow the party line. But in Iran there is no central organization to distribute campaign funds—and no party discipline.
People often drift from one faction to another—sometimes based on an issue that is on the front burner this week, other times based on whether they get along with or do not get along with a major factional leader.
The Principleists used to be fairly united, but since President Rohani won election in 2013, that group has been weakened. Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani used to be a major figure in framing the list of endorsed Principleists that voters were urged to back. This year, however, Larijani not only bowed out of that role but also declined to have his own name put on the list.
The accompanying table shows the Principleists winning anywhere from 27 percent to 55 percent of the seats. That is very wide range. The Iran Times thinks the low figure of 78 seats or 27 percent of the Majlis is the most accurate (for now) and the higher numbers include a lot of guessing and wishful thinking. Many independents eventually join one faction or another and the higher numbers may be based on assumptions of where independents will end up. Note that the last three estimates in the table don’t even recognize any independents, which is not rational.
Many of those who run as independents are not ideologues. They run from rural constituencies and come to Tehran without much interest in national issues. Their main goal is often to extract money for local construction projects—pork, as it is called in the United States. They often don’t participate in issue debates or even both to vote very often.
The numbers in the table for the Reformists are the most consistent. Except for two outliers, the estimates are for 83, 84 or 85 Reformist members. The Reformists produced one unified list of candidates so it was fairly easy to check the winners against that list. However, the Reformist group was still adding names of endorsees just three days before the poll and one might logically ask how truly loyal someone is if the Reformists didn’t even know the candidate was a supporter one week before the election. Considering that only 21 Reformists won in the elections four years ago, they have come out of this election doing four times better.
The Principleists had a different problem. Unlike the Reformists who saw most of their known candidates thrown out by the Council of Guardians, the Principleists had thousands of candidates and could only choose 290 to endorse—one for each seat. What happened was that some candidates took the anointed list, deleted a candidate and inserted their own picture instead, distributing the doctored list in their own neighborhood. It is possible some of the counts included in the table found such self-identified Principleists and added them, which would be quite reasonable. Some elections in the provinces had an endorsed Principleist running against an unendorsed Principleist. But they are both Principleists. (The faction often called conservative prefers to be called Principleist, meaning the members are people of principle.)
Another factor to consider is the runoffs. Any candidate who got at least 25 percent of the vote was elected last month. But otherwise, the Interior Ministry has plucked the two candidates with the highest votes below 25 percent and sent them into a runoff to be held in April. The Interior Ministry has announced there will be 69 runoffs. So figures in the accompanying table that don’t show 69 runoffs are clearly wrong. The Fars news agency showed the Principleists with an absolute majority of 153 deputies and Reformists with 111 or more than any other estimate. But it showed no independents elected at all and it reported only 21 runoffs, clearly a major error that begs the question of whether Fars did any work to come up with its figures or just threw darts at a board.
All the estimates include five minority deputies—those representing the Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian communities. In the past, these deputies have supported the Reformists on most issues.
Once the Majlis is sworn in this May, deputies will sign up to join individual factions and attend their meetings.
But, given the absence of a party system in Iran and the fluidity of views of many deputies, it will likely be hard to nail down any firm count even then. If one could do so, it might be best to see the Majlis divided into six groups:
- Hardline Principleists—These are the people who like to march around the fringe of the Majlis chamber chanting “Death to America” and waving their fists in the air. A number of these flakey deputies were eliminated by the Council of Guardians and others lost election. How many remain is unclear, but the number is believed significantly less than in the outgoing Majlis. Some have suggested that Larijani, disgusted with these people, will move to end the chanting in the chamber and try to enforce a more professional demeanor. It isn’t clear who their leader will be—or if there will even be a leader.
- Traditional Principleists—These are staunch supporters of the Supreme Leader and committed revolutionary ideologues, but have grown to find the marching and chanting hardliners to be offensive. Their leader was Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, a former Majlis speaker who headed the group that put together the Principleist list of endorsed candidates. But Haddad-Adel ran in Tehran and lost to the Reformist landslide. Who will emerge as leader remains to be seen.
- Moderate Principleists—These are the followers of Speaker Larijani, who in the last two years has shifted his position to cooperate with President Rohani in order to get things done. These people have essentially slipped the bonds of revolutionary ideology and turned toward pragmatism. It is possible that many of the deputies who ran as Traditional Principleists may shift to the Larijani group.
- Moderate Reformists—These people object to being called Reformists. They are staunch supporters of President Rohani and his agenda that is heavy on economic reforms and light on social reforms. They formed an electoral alliance with the Reformists at the urging of former President Ali-Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani and others. It is possible that alliance will break down in the coming months, but not likely. Rafsanjani is effectively the leader of this group.
- Hardline Reformists—These are the people who marched in the streets after the 2009 elections and are anathema to the Supreme Leader. The Reformist leaders understand that and are trying to keep one foot inside the establishment and one foot with their angry followers. A core issue for this group is the continued house arrest of the Green Movement figures from 2009—Mir-Hossain Musavi, Mehdi Karrubi and Zahra Rahnavard. The Reformists running for the Majlis last month were silent on that issue, however, as it is a red flag for the Supreme Leader. Social reforms remain key for this group. The leader of this group is former President Mohammad Khatami. The leader of the group in the Majlis is Mohammad-Reza Aref, who was first vice president under President Khatami, who put together the electoral list this year, and came in first in Tehran in the elections. The other leaders in the Majlis are Soheila Jelodarzadeh (third in Tehran) Ali-Reza Mahjub (fourth) and Elias Hazrati (fifth).
• Independents—These deputies do not join any faction and often have little interest in policy, unless it affects their own constituency. They are mainly interested in getting public funds spent in their constituencies and are open to trading their votes on policy for public funds. They rarely play a policy role in the Majlis.