DUBAI: The defeat of the reformist camp in Iran’s recent local elections is bound to intensify its struggle with the conservatives, but it also shows rising impatience for a faster, deeper pace of changes in this Islamic republic, experts say.

In the Feb 28 elections, hardliners opposed to President Mohammad Khatami’s reforms claimed 14 of 15 possible seats on the Tehran City Council, a benchmark for the rest of the country. Overall, polls were held for 905 city councils and 34,205 village councils.

According to the interior ministry, just 49 per cent of Iran’s 41.2 million registered voters exercised their franchise. The big cities, where the reformists bear more influence, recorded a poor 15 per cent turnout. In contrast, the reformists had swept Iran’s first local polls in 1999.

The reform era was ushered in by Khatami’s victory in 1997, followed by the victories of his followers in two successive polls, and Khatami’s own re-election in 2001.

The conservative daily ‘Kayhan’ called the election result a “resounding victory of the fundamentalists” and said Iranians had “turned their back on the reformists”.

Analysts said the low turnout was a crucial factor in the outcome. This, in turn, reflected growing public anger at sluggish pace of reforms since Khatami was elected and the infighting within the reformist camp.

“The results are not an indication of a retreat from democracy, but a warning that the public is frustrated by the factional feuds of recent years,” said political analyst A.K Pasha, who was in Tehran as an election observer.

“It is a sign of disappointment due to the failure of the politicians to effect the democratic reforms and economic improvements they had promised, said Pasha, director of the Gulf Studies Programme at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.

Khatami’s policies have been most successful in the social sphere in Iran, where couples in parks now hold hands, women stroll freely with makeup and fashionable headscarves showing their hair.

But he has so far failed on the economic front. Government plans to create jobs and overcome poverty, which affects one-third of the country’s 65.6 million people, are blocked or delayed. The same goes for plans to diversify the economy, which is almost wholly dependent on oil.

Officially, 13 per cent of the population is out of work, but some say the real figure is bigger. Inflation too is put at 13 per cent but could be as high as 20 per cent.—Dawn/The InterPress News Service.