Iran

After another round of voting

Critics are daring to speak out

THE second round of majlis, or parliamentary, elections on Friday 25th April were not expected to change anything significant in Iran, where conservatives have a strong grip on power. Of the 290 seats contested in the opening round in March, some 82 remained up for grabs. The results in Tehran, the capital, could at least give an indication of the health of the opposition: conservatives took all 19 seats that were decided outright in the first round, but 11 were too close to call and reformists were hoping to see at least a few gains.

Even success in the capital would not give the reformists more than a slightly larger minority of seats in parliament, and thus hardly any more clout than before. Ali Ansari of St Andrews University concludes that, whatever the results, there will be little or no impact on government policies. Power is ultimately vested in the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, and also in the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Neither shows any sign of relinquishing his grip.

Yet jockeying for power at the other levels of government does continue, causing a few headaches for Mr Ahmadinejad. Earlier this week the minister of the economy, Davoud Danesh Jafari, was shuffled out of the cabinet. Unusually, he left with something of a bang, lambasting Mr Ahmadinejad for dreadful mishandling of Iran’s economy, failing to plan for the future or to listen to economic experts. The president was distracted by “peripheral” issues, and had allowed inflation to soar to 18%, he said. Although others have spoken out before, Mr Jafari’s words were unusually forceful and public as they came from a former ally.

The economy is Mr Ahmadinejad’s Achilles’ heel. The opposition has criticised him over it and the clerical establishment has joined in. In the past week prominent clerics have said that he has failed to take responsibility for Iran’s economic woes. Ayatollah Mohammad Reza Mahdavikani, a former prime minister and a prominent conservative cleric, was quoted in Aftab-e Yazd, a reformist newspaper, as saying: “We shift problems and faults onto others and in order to say we are innocent we blame others.” Several leaders of Friday prayers have complained that the government is doing too little to reduce inflation. Even Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, the president’s closest spiritual adviser, has said that officials have failed to employ expertise to tackle poverty.

Such criticism also marks a shift in influence in Iran. In the years following the revolution clerics dominated government; today the clergy is losing out to veterans of the Iran-Iraq war and former members of organisations such as the Revolutionary Guard. Mr Ahmadinejad, himself a former Guard commander, has overseen the rise of the military men. He has shrewdly handed government contracts to powerful interest groups, in particular the Revolutionary Guard, ensuring that his strongest supporters remain happy, whatever the general state of the economy. Mr Khamenei, too, has helped to facilitate the rise of the men from the armed forces. His religious credentials for the position of supreme leader have been questioned in the past, so he is inclined to turn to other quarters, including military ones, for support.

The context for all this is the presidential election next year, where the impact of the economy, if matters have worsened, might be greater than for the parliamentary vote. In that election Mr Ahmadinejad’s toughest competition will come from other conservatives such as Ali Larijani, a former nuclear negotiator. With Mr Khamenei still in a strong position, absolute control is not up for grabs. But in Iran’s byzantine corridors of power, rather than in the polling stations, the fight for influence goes on.