Pundits Say Iran’s Hardliners Block Change And Reform
A relatively moderate politician says Iranians no longer believe in the reformist-conservative dichotomy that has been the mainstay of regime politics for 25 years.
A relatively moderate politician says Iranians no longer believe in the reformist-conservative dichotomy that has been the mainstay of regime politics for 25 years.
Referring to mass disqualification of well-known reformist figures in previous elections, Ghavami told Entekhab news website in Tehran that the people are unlikely to vote for a few low-key reformists who are usually allowed to run for the parliament.
"However, as a lot of people will take part in the elections anyway, they are likely to cast blank ballots in the 2024 parliamentary election," he added in the March 24 interview. However, Ghavami pointed out that the country's biggest problem in the new Iranian year that started on March 21 will be the back-breaking high cost of living.
“Reformists are those politicians and public figures who have long argued that Iran needs change and reforms, but have believed that in its current form the Islamic regime can evolve and become a more democratic political system. Opposing them are ‘principlists’ or conservatives and hardliners who traditionally did not believe in liberalization.
In the 2020 parliamentary and 2021 presidential elections, the Guardian Council that vets candidates according to the constitution blocked almost all reformists from putting forth their candidacy. As a result, all three government branches are now dominated by hardliners loyal to Iran’s authoritarian ruler Ali Khamenei.
Ghavami pointed out the "non-competitive" nature of elections in Iran and said the regime will hold next year’s elections anyway regardless of the people's reluctance to turn out to vote.
In another comment, Ghavami said that Iran needs reforms in the area of foreign policy, but the current administration of President Ebrahim Raisi is incapable of changing course. Probably out of political correctness, he did not mention that foreign policy is controlled by Khamenei.
Rising prices, Ghavami said, are likely to cause a political, economic and social catastrophe in the coming months. Positive change in Iran is unlikely as long as the government cannot solve its domestic and international problems and fails to respond to the demands Iranians have put forward during their protest.
Meanwhile, in an interview, academic Mohammad Javad Gholamreza Kashi said most of Iran's problems are due to the fact that hardliners in the government and parliament have refused to recognize the idea of people's participation in politics.
He likened Iran's current situation to a case of childbirth during which the hardliners are determined to kill the baby before it is born. This comes while the society is looking for a natural birth, he said.
Kashi, an assistant professor of law and political science reiterated that while the people of Iran have pluralist demands, the hardliners continue beating on the drums of unilateralism. Explaining this in sociological terms, Kashi said that hardliners are adamant to solve a modern problem with an old and outdated solution.
He traced back Iranians demands to the 1905 Constitutional Revolution that although led to modernism in the form of new buildings, roads, railways and airports after less than half a century, its demands for the rule of law, freedom and justice were never met.
In the meantime, while the people have embraced modernism, Iran's new rulers are the same religious fundamentalist they used to be at the beginning the 20th century. "The baby is still not born," Kashi said, adding that "the people are running out of patience and demand a Cesarean surgery while the hardliners are likely to pull a new trick out of their sleeves."
During his Friday prayer sermons, which was the first in the fasting month of Ramadan, Mowlavi Abdolhamid said, "In the past, we have had elections in which we elected representatives and presidents, but they were not real elections, they were appointments.”
In a free election, people have a choice to vote for whoever they deem fit to represent them, but in Iran the Guardian Council puts forth a number of their cherrypicked insiders, who are not capable of running the country, he said.
He further described killing of protesters and harsh treatment of people detained during over six months of nationwide rallies against the regime as a "big mistake" and a "grave sin."
"There are protests everywhere in the world, but they (authorities) listen to the people and do not kill them like they did in Iran. Killing protesting people in Iran was a big mistake. They should not have hit and killed people with gunfire. Many people went to prison and the detainees were treated harshly, which was a painful and regretful incident,” he said.
Abdolhamid went on to say that neither religion, nor sect, should be a factor when it comes to elections, noting that the only people who should be in managerial positions are those who can make Iran prosperous, not like the current officials who only care about filling their own pockets.
Although street protests are not as frequent as the past few months, peoples’ hearts are "wounded and in pain," the cleric maintained.
Portraying the previous Iranian year as a grim year with lots of ups and downs that led to the creation of the current protest movement, he said, “The people of Iran felt difficulties regarding many issues, they saw themselves in trouble and failure in life, they were under the most severe economic pressures that threaten their livelihood."
In addition to economic issues, the outspoken Sunni leader said systematic corruption, as well as unpopular domestic and foreign policies were other factors led the people to revolt.
This Friday again authorities shut down internet access in Zahedan, the provincial capital of Sistan-Baluchestan where Abdolhamid delivers his sermons and it is home to the country’s Sunni Baluch minority of up to two million people. Cyberspace watchdog NetBlocks confirmed the major disruption to internet service, saying that the incident follows an ongoing pattern of network blackouts targeting protests during Friday prayers.
Following his sermons, people of the city held rallies to protest against the Islamic Republic for the 25th week in a row, chanting anti-regime slogans like “We Don’t Want a Child-Killing Regime.” The Sunni Baluch population have taken to the streets in Zahedan every Friday after prayers since September 30 when government forces cracked down on protesters and killed more than 80 protesters, known as Bloody Friday. Earlier in the day, Haalvsh website, a local news outlet that monitors rights violations in Iran's Baluchestan region, said 121 of the protesters who were killed in Zahedan and Khash on Bloody Friday were identified.
The petition which was launched on March 20, the last day of the previous Iranian calendar year, has already been signed by almost 15,000 people, despite the petition website having been blocked by the government. The text of the petition calls the 27 percent increase in the minimum wage to 82 million rials per month ($180) for a family of 3.3, including benefits, “unfair”.
The minimum wage in Iran is determined by a council composed of government, business, and government-approved unions, and in fact it sets the income for most wage earners.
The petition alleges that representatives of employers and the government which it calls “the biggest employer” imposed their bidding on the workers’ representatives and demands adjustment in the make-up of the council to allow workers have a bigger say in its decisions.
“This meager increase in the deplorable current economic circumstances and the several-fold increase, even in the basic costs of an ordinary life, is not logical or legal in any way,” the petition said.
Workers and their representatives say the low minimum wage increase was a “shock” to them. “This level of difference between the inflation rate and the minimum wage increase is unprecedented,” Hassan Izadi, an official of Labor House in Gilan Province said while demanding the parliament’s intervention.
Iran has one of the lowest minimum wages in the world, but salaries were increasing from 2000-2010 when the minimum wage hit a record high of about $275 in 2010. This coincided with the time when the United Nations Security Council began imposing sanctions to force Tehran to roll back its nuclear program.
A few months into the presidency of Ebrahim Raisi last year, when inflation was around 40 percent, the High Council of Labor increased the minimum wage by an unprecedented 57 percent after two consecutive years of very high inflation. At the exchange rate of the time the minimum wage last year almost equaled $220.
Many politicians and commentators have warned that rising prices and declining incomes will lead to more protests in the coming months.
This year’s increase brings the monthly minimum wage (without benefits) down to around $120 although the overall rate of inflation has increased to around 50 percent and to at least 70 percent in the food group while rents have also hugely gone up in most cities.
Authorities keep promising to control inflation. In his New Year speech on March 21, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei dubbed the new year as “the year of bringing inflation under control”, a promise also repeated by Raisi in his speech, but reminiscent of similar slogans in previous years.
Wages have become a fraction of what workers need to survive during five years of high double-digit inflation and huge devaluation of the national currency, particularly during the past year. The rial has fallen 13-fold since 2018 when the United States withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal and imposed tough economic sanctions.
Some 60 percent of Iranians have fallen into what government officials describe as poverty and can no longer afford meat and even fruit and vegetables, with consumption dropping by half.
“How is it that the government that set the poverty line at 145m rials monthly income sets half of this amount as minimum wage for workers,” said Ali-Asghar Najjari, an official of the Labor House of Zanjan Province. He also accused officials of trampling on the Labor Law which requires minimum wage to be proportionate with the inflation rate.
“We must remind [economy minister] that the government and its economic team are sadly not capable to deliver on their promises of lowering inflation,” Najjari said referring to promises to workers.