On the threshold of Iran's presidential election

By Riza Sihbudi

JAKARTA (JP): Iran will hold its eighth presidential election on June 8. Once again current president Mohammed Khatami has decided to nominate himself as a presidential candidate.

The reelection of Khatami, who first took office in 1997, is permitted by the Iranian Islamic Republic's constitution which states, "The president is elected for a four-year term by the direct vote of the people. His re-election is permissible only once".

Iran's 22-year-old political system could be labeled "liberal" by Third World standards. Despite its Syiah school of Islamic thought, modern institutions enjoy fairly significant importance.

A president is limited to two consecutive terms of office. The president and parliament, or the Assembly of Islamic Shura, are directly elected through genuinely free, discreet, fair and just general elections. Likewise, the Constitution rules that all presidentially appointed cabinet ministers must be approved by the majority of members of parliament.

The Assembly of Experts, comprising 82 senior ulemas, are also directly elected for a term of four years. This Assembly mainly serves to elect a rahbar, the supreme position in Iran's political structure.

There is also a Guardian Council, with a membership of 12 Islamic law experts, of which six are elected by the rahbar and the other six by parliament.

This institution's main task is to avoid contradiction between legislative products and Islamic teachings and the Constitution, as well as to select presidential candidates.

The above political institutions show that public participation receives a significant role in Iran's political process. Therefore, despite the dissatisfaction expressed by the Mujahidin Khalq group and the family of the former Shah in exile against the mullahs' government, Iranians are generally proud of having a better-performing democracy compared to that of other Middle East countries.

An indication of a more democratic political life is the considerable openness of the elite toward frequently harsh criticism. Official newspapers often carry criticism from MPs or intellectuals toward the president's policies.

Democracy in Iran is, of course, incomparable to that of the West. During the early stages of its Islamic Republican era, Iran once tried its hand at "liberal" democracy, but political anarchy almost plunged the country into civil war.

Those in power then sought to bring things under control, which has led the media and western observers to categorize Iran as "undemocratic" and "authoritarian".

To them, including leading political expert Samuel P. Huntington, the most democratic state in the Middle East is Israel -- which endorses democracy for its own nation but not for Palestinians.

The question is whether, in the June election, Khatami will repeat his success of four years ago, despite only gaining 62 percent of votes at that time, when he did not enjoy the popularity he does today.

Khatami's chances now seem bigger, with no rival being able to match his popularity. Last year two names were nominated, Khatami and Nateq-Nouri.

It remains unclear why the hardliners' group has not nominated candidates to challenge Khatami. Perhaps they are deliberately saving their energy and accumulating power for the next presidential election when Khatami is no longer entitled to run.

Furthermore, since the reformist Khatami's triumph four years ago, his popularity has increased considerably, despite vigorous repression by his political opponents. This was evident from the majority of seats they gained in the local 1999 parliamentary election and in the 2000 election of the national parliament.

The more forceful the repression against the reformists' group, the greater the sympathy Khatami has gained and the less popular the hardliners have become.

Nevertheless, challenges against Khatami are looming. One difficult task which Khatami and his supporting reformists face is to control the extremely dominant judiciary.

Winning seats and controlling the executive and judiciary bodies has proved inadequate for Khatami and his supporters to carry out their reformist concepts and programs. As Iran's presidential election is thrown into the spotlight, close observation of Iran beyond the election will, therefore, be equally intriguing.

The writer is chairman of the Indonesian Study for Middle East Studies in Jakarta.