When Iran's former president, Mohammad Khatami, announced that he would stand as a presidential candidate in the country's June elections, there were hopes that once again he could use his charisma to mobilize voters in favor of a reformist program.
People within the Khatami camp recognized that the policies of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had indirectly served their cause by showing the reformist program up as a more pragmatic alternative. Almost four years of economic mismanagement by Ahmadinejad, as well further constraints on social and individual freedoms and further isolation internationally, persuaded the reformists that they stood a chance of winning.
Khatami's condition to stand for the election was that the former prime minster, Mir Hussein Mousavi, not stand as a candidate. This created an impression that Khatami and Mousavi were politically on the same side, and that Khatami did not want to split the reformist vote. Mousavi's silence created an impression that a deal has been struck and that the two men were coordinating their actions. However, just as Khatami's campaign was gaining momentum, Mousavi stunned observers by putting himself forward as a candidate. That was immediately followed by Khatami's decision to withdrawal from the race in favor of Mousavi.
Mousavi's action and Khatami's hasty reaction raised a number of questions about the fate of the reformists in the election. Was this an embarrassing lack of coordination between leaders from the same political camp or a sign of ideological disagreement between them?
Apart from discrediting Khatami, Mousavi's action indicated that there were few ideological affinities between the two men. Although, Khatami claimed that he has given up his candidacy in favor of Mousavi, the former prime minister's recent statements suggest he does not see himself as part and parcel of the reform camp.
In his first statement, he emphasized the importance of reform as much as he did the values close to hearts and minds of the Iranian "principalists," those "who have adopted a hairline position" in Iranian politics. Mousavi stated that only a return to the fundamental values of the Islamic revolution could guarantee change. He said that in the run-up to the election, Iranians should again think how to create a society based on the teachings of the Prophet Mohammad and the ideas of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Reform by definition should be about improving the present for a better future. This is at least what Khatami advocated during his campaigns.
Nonetheless, Mousavi's statement was more about returning to the past. He reminded people more about the early years of the revolution than the issues that had confronted the reformist government for eight years. He did not mention how he planned to push for reform, and he did not talk about the obstacles facing the reformist agenda.
Mousavi's over-emphasis on values, rather than practical solutions, implies he is more at ease with conservative hardliners than reform-minded voters. Unlike Khatami, who regarded women and youth as the backbone of his campaign, Mousavi returned to orthodox revolutionary rhetoric identifying the poor as the most reliable social class for both reform and of "principalism." Mousavi visibly does not want to be seen as a candidate with an explicit reform mandate, so as not to alienate the conservatives. This has pushed him to introduce a different definition for reform than what Khatami would have offered had he stayed in the race.
Khatami was not only afraid of the split among reform-minded voters; there were other factors that compelled him to withdraw. The former president would have stood a minimal chance of winning a landslide victory with Mousavi also in the race. That's not necessarily because reformists would have split however, but because Mousavi would have been able to draw support from conservative voters as well. After two landslide victories in 1997 and 2001, Khatami could not have afforded to face a bitter defeat. He recognized the public's nostalgia for a reformist government, but also appreciated the fundamental obstacles involved.
Khatami also could no longer fully count on his traditional base of support. Many of those who had backed him in the past were frustrated with the slowness of reform under his leadership. Furthermore, Khatami had to take into consideration the participation of the Basij and the Revolutionary Guards in the election of 2005, which led to the surprising defeat of a powerful pragmatist and former president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, by Ahmadinejad. A similar outcome alarmed him enough where he was obliged to rethink his decision.
All this underlines that the widespread template for interpreting the upcoming Iranian presidential election, that of the reformer Mousavi confronting a hostile conservative camp with the backing of an ideological soul mate in Khatami, is rather more complicated. The outcome of this will be clear soon enough in three months time.
Afshin Shahi is a doctoral candidate at the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University in the United Kingdom. He wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR.
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