A Serious Political Blow to Ahmadinejad or an Election Maneuver?

Farideh Farhi

Something interesting happened in Iran yesterday that some, particularly outside of Iran, are interpreting as a serious political blow to Ahmadinejad. I am not sure whether it should be considered a serious blow or more of an election maneuver on the part of the current speaker of the parliament speaker, Gholamali Haddad Adel, trying to improve his standing among his conservative colleagues who have to decide soon who should lead their list of candidates for the next session of the parliament or his Tehrani constituency who will have to make a decision soon about whether or not he should be re-elected.

The story goes something like this. Apparently some time in the past week or so Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent a letter to the speaker complaining about parliamentary legislation passed which mandate policies that, from his point of view, clearly infringe upon the prerogatives of the executive branch. Calling these legislations - which included retuning to daylight savings time after Ahmadinejad had rashly abandoned it or the law mandating the executive branch to specify budgetary lines for certain allocations – unconstitutional, he asked the speaker to stop these “evident” violations of the constitution. He also said that he would not implement a legislation to supply cheap gas to villages suffering power cuts in an unexpectedly harsh winter because the source of funding was not specified.

But in registering these complaints Ahmadinejad was standing on shaky grounds as the Iranian constitution has a rather clear and peculiar institutional set-up for finding which legislative acts are unconstitutional. The Guardian Council has the task of validating both the Islamic and constitutional nature of legislation (with the Expediency Council as the final arbiter if the parliament and Guardian Council cannot reach an agreement). Regarding the latter, it often sends back legislation it deems unconstitutional on the basis of Article 75 of the constitution which requires specification of compensation or source of funding for any legislation that leads to the reduction of public revenues or increase in public expenditures. By in effect proclaiming the executive branch a constitutional authority and then using that authority to not implement laws that couldn't have become laws unless the Guardian Council had agreed were constitutional, Ahmadinejad is walking on very thin legal reasoning as far as the parameters of the Islamic republic are concerned.

Haddad Adel decided to solve the problem by writing a letter to the leader, who, since the 1989 constitutional revision which significantly expanded the power of his office, is endowed with the responsibility of resolving conflicts among the three branches of the government. Ayatollah Khamenei responded immediately in a short, terse note, stating "All legal legislation that has gone through [the required] procedures stipulated in the constitution is binding for all branches of power."

Receiving the response, Haddad Adel immediately released all the relevant written exchanges, making a point that the leader had taken the side of the parliament.
As I mentioned above, some outsiders, perhaps looking for individual conflicts at the top as the explanation for why things happen in Iran they way they do (a sort of Kremlinology, if you will, applied to Iran) and trying to extract what these conflicts indicate about the direction of Iranian politics, saw this intervention as the “latest in a series of recent signals that Khamenei is losing patience with a president to whom he once showed staunch loyalty.”

In Iran, though, the commentary was much more skeptical and focused not on Khamenei’s action but Haddad Adel’s. Why did he publicize this? Why did he do it now? To some the move was a good one but rather late. After all, as one current reformist deputy put it, Ahmadinejad has repeatedly violated legislative authority on financial matters by making promises of major projects in his numerous provincial trips without going through the required funding process in the parliament. Even more problematic the parliamentary leadership had said nothing despite repeated complaints by various deputies.

A couple of conservative deputies, frustrated by the parliamentary leadership’s passivity, were more brutal, pointing out that Ahmadinejad’s unilateral moves had undermined and weakened the institution of the parliament which instead of “being behind the government was more held in its fist.” This is why to them what Haddad Adel did seemed more like a “propaganda move” to hide the lowering of the status or weakening of the parliament that had occurred under Haddad Adel’s own leadership.

Etemad newspaper saw the move less in terms of shaping public opinion and more as part and parcel of an attempt to force the conservative coalition to place Haddad Adel on top of its list of candidates for the city of Tehran, enhancing his chance of re-election but also for becoming a speaker again. This was more than anything else “a message about Haddad Adel’s spiritual influence and current position in the Islamic republic and that because of this influence the conservative leadership has no other choice but to accept him as the list leader and probably his leadership again in the 8th parliament.” One deputy quoted in the Etemad piece even goes so far as to suggest that the whole thing was a mere personal feud between the two men.

From his point of view, Ahmadinejad had not implemented many legislations in the past and will continue to do the same in the future (indeed even after the leader’s intervention, he went on and insisted that what the parliament was doing was still unconstitutional). His mistake this time around was simply to put his long-held position in writing, giving Haddad Adel an opportunity to capitalize and letting those making decisions about the candidate lists know about his clout and his ability to get the support of those who really matter in Iran.

Accepting Etemad’s version of what happened essentially implies that everyday politics in contemporary Iran, like everywhere else, may simply and merely be interesting, intricate and yes petty, nothing more and nothing less. Trying to read too much into everyday politicking of Iranian politicians interested in securing their position in relation to other politicians is increasingly looking like an over-interpretation intended to fit Iran into a narrative that implicitly or explicitly asks us to think of its politics as different from elsewhere in so far as some fundamental change about power relationships are about to happen.

Strangely despite all the economic problems, external pressures, and even the reality of a president who has antagonized a whole of array of elites in Iran and is deemed both incompetent and rash by many of them, Iran looks pretty settled to me; settled enough for dirty laundry to be washed in public for electoral gains. In any one day, the president can yell constitutional disaster; the speaker of the parliament can make big noises about parliamentary prerogatives; the all powerful leader can intervene presumably for the good cause of parliamentary vigor; commentators can look around for a second, detect manipulation and personal rivalries, note it and then get ready for commentary on the next public drama. Life goes on! Read more on this article...

“If Americans Are Wise They Would Not Meddle in Iran's Affairs

Calling for the American use of wisdom was Gholamali Haddad Adel, the conservative speaker of the parliament, as he was registering as a candidate for the upcoming March 14 parliamentary elections. “Last time Bush also advised people not to participate in the elections. His suggestions this time will also have the same fate as his last suggestion. If Americans are wise they would not meddle in Iran's Affairs.”

The issue of "U.S support for some groups" in Iran’s elections was also brought up is a January 8 speech given by Ayatollah Khamenei. He said, “The sensitivity of the leadership regarding elections is due to the concern that some individuals find their way to the parliament who have tendencies towards being dominated, weak in front of powers, and passive when facing international agitations.”

Two days later, reacting angrily to the call for the international observation of Iranian elections by the opposition group, Freedom Movement, Ayatollah Khamenei was even more explicit:

“American support for anyone in Iran is a disgrace. Both people and the group for which the president of America has declared his support should think why America wants to support that group and that group had what deficiency that made America to come to its support… We must be careful so that the elections do not become a plaything in the hands of foreigners and political groups and individuals should define their boundaries with the enemy because if these boundaries lose their color or are erased, there is the possibility of the enemy crossing these boundaries or some individuals carelessly falling into the lap of the enemy…Political groups and individuals, along with delineating their boundary with the enemy, must also define their boundary with the hired hands, servants, and individuals who are in the service of the enemy.”

Taking cue, Mohammad Reza Bahonar, the current deputy speaker, decided to talk about the “hatred” of the people for groups that are “petrified of” and are supported by foreigners. “The experience of a colored coup in Iran has been defeated and the groups connected to foreigners cannot go up the ladder of elections through agitation and making noise and surrender the country to foreigners.”

All this accusatory and threatening thunder occurred in a week in which candidates for the March 14th parliamentary elections are registering (registration period was extended for a day and will end on Saturday). So the question is what the conservatives, with the protection and cue from Ayatollah Khamenei, are up to. I can think of two objectives; one having to do with transforming the general atmosphere that has characterized recent elections in Iran and second essentially revolving around the conservatives’ campaign strategy.

Regarding the transformation of the atmosphere, I should make clear that Iranian elections (and amazingly this will be the 28th election since the 1979 revolution, counting the first three elections regarding the founding of the Islamic Republic, election of the Constitutional Assembly, and ratification of the constitution) are always raucous with lots of accusations flying around from all sides. But the periods leading to elections, particularly in the past few elections, are usually periods when a conversational space opens and many issues regarding the manner elections are held, the vetting process, handicapping of many political players, constraints imposed to prevent a truly competitive process, and impediments to a truly democratic process are aired. The clear and unambiguous references to the “enemy hands” and domestic groups and individuals wanting to “surrender to the enemy” are intended to close that conversational space and in all likelihood will be successful at tightening it.

To be sure, there will be numerous complaints about the tightening of this conversational space in reformist and opposition blogs and websites but newspapers connected to various political groups which are contesting the conservative control of the parliament will have to stay away from complaints about the rules of the game lest they’ll be accused of having sold their souls to George Bush. In Iran, like in other contested political environments, the charge of weakness against the enemy, or using the enemy’s talking points, is usually a pretty good conversation killer.

It is the desire to close this conversational space about the unfairness of the rules of the game that made the supreme leader to talk disdainfully - in a not so disguised reference to the reformist deputies who engaged in a 2004 parliamentary sit-in when they found out that they were barred from standing in the next election through disqualifications - about “those who intended to suspend the elections four years ago with a show and a game.” This open expression of disdain is of course also a cue from the leader that the wholesale disqualification of the reformists of the type who won in the sixth parliamentary elections is not only fine but expected.

The tightening of the conversational space is only one aspect of what is going on. For the conservative candidates like Haddad Adel and Bahonar, the focus on foreign enemies and their domestic servants is also intended to serve the much more mundane purpose of helping them win in an election which they worry conservatives might lose to more centrist candidates.

By pointing the accusatory finger towards the reformists, they hope to change the conversation and deflect attention from the criticism - coming even from the centrist candidates and parties with a good chance of doing well in the election - that the conservatives controlling the executive and legislative branches have been both reckless and incompetent in their running of the economy.

Instead, the "successes" the conservatives have had in defending Iran’s “national sovereignty” and standing tall on the nuclear issue will be touted with a constant reference to those who were ready to give in on the question of enrichment out of fear. This attempted change of conversation is also important for the maintenance of some sort of unity among the conservative ranks which are deeply divided over economic issues and policies pursued by President Ahmadinejad

The upcoming election will still be highly contested and choices have to be made. According to the Ministry of Interior, which is in charge of running the elections, already close to 4200 candidates have so far signed up for the 290-seat parliament (including some big names such as the conservative Ali Larijani who was pushed out of his job as Iran's chief nuclear negotiator by Ahmadinejad). But the acrimonious nature of US-Iran relations is being used as an excuse to narrow the choices the electorate has. So the conservative Haddad Adel is probably secretly hoping that the Americans do keep meddling, of course only with their words and not in their deeds. Read more on this article...