Iranian youths celebrate Khatami's win

Iranian youths celebrate Khatami's win

By Kathy Evans

TEHRAN: Young Iranians gave out flowers and sweets in Tehran's Revolution Square Sunday in celebration of the overwhelming mandate for change given to Mohammed Khatami in his presidential election victory.

About 29 million people out of a total electorate of 33 million voted last Friday; of those 20 million voted for Khatami. His nearest rival, Nateq Nouri, the powerful Speaker of parliament, won 5 million votes, a result which many analysts saw as a rebuff to the elderly radical clerics of Qom who backed him.

Yet the outgoing president, Hashemi Rafsanjani, denied Sunday that the huge vote for Khatami could be considered a protest vote against the system of strict controls which govern social life and freedom of speech.

"The majority of our young people would like to be compatible with the values of the revolution and Islamic principles," he said. Asked if such principles could allow people to read and entertain freely in their homes, he said: "Some of these requests are not possible to meet."

However, people were already predicting that the size of Khatami's vote would embolden young people to reject the system.

"The Khatami vote shows they want change quickly and both sides could get aggressive. There could be a backlash from the revolutionary police forces," a psychologist said.

A Tehran mother reported that her eight-year-old returned from school Sunday saying the girls had spent the morning discussing when they were going to rip off their headscarves. In Iran, girls have to wear Islamic cover from the age of nine.

However, as the celebration rallies by students began, police were active in maintaining dress and behavior codes. In one incident Sunday night, a woman was seen being stopped in her car and taken away for wearing make-up.

The apparatus that controls public morals in Iran is huge, involving thousands of regime loyalists. Private morals are the domain of the civil police, but other volunteer squads, such as the Bassij, the force which fought the Iran-Iraq war, are also involved.

Another prominent force is the Elimination of Vice and Propagation of Virtue Squad, and its detention center in north Tehran was busy as usual Sunday. Two mixed parties had been raided several days ago and in the tiny room which functioned as a reception, upper-class women dressed in heavy Islamic cover queued to plead with a scowling police sergeant to allow them to deliver food parcels to their relatives inside.

"My son, Mohammed, was arrested last Thursday when he went to a goodbye party for a girl leaving for Dubai. He has been here since. When he comes out, we are going to do everything to get him out to Canada," said one woman.

A group of relatives said 40 teenagers had been arrested at one party. "We haven't had any news of (my son) since Thursday, when they forced him on to a bus," said a woman wearing a chador. Usually, families are asked to pay hefty fines to secure the release of their relatives.

It is unlikely that Khatami will be able, or even want, to stop such activities by the moral police forces. He has to work with a parliament dominated by conservatives and also with the Guardians' Council, a body of traditional rightwing clerics.

Rafsanjani could play a key role in his new post as head of the Expediency Council, which mediates between parliament and the Guardians' Council, and advises the Supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei.

-- The Guardian