TEHRAN: Tears spilled down Iranian President Mohammad Khatami’s cheeks as he registered to stand for re-election in 2001.
Four years of watching his ministers impeached and imprisoned, liberal newspapers closed and pro-reform students beaten and jailed, had already convinced the mid-ranking cleric that he would never overcome hardline resistance to reform.
And so it turned out.
The 62-year-old Khatami, who came to power in a 1997 landslide election on a wave of optimism among millions of Iranians and across the world, is bowing out of politics quietly with little fanfare and few thanks for his efforts.
“No doubt the popular Khatami has several achievements to his credit,” the liberal Iran Daily newspaper summed up in a recent editorial.
“But as a philosopher-president and idealist it became apparent that he couldn’t fit in with the rough-and-tumble of power politics.”
Eight men are vying to replace Khatami in elections June 17. He is barred by law from seeking a third consecutive term.
While Iran’s political system remains undented after eight years of Khatami’s efforts, significant, if subtle, social changes have taken place since his 1997 election.
Political debate is freer, ordinary people are less afraid to speak out and demand more from their leaders, the judiciary and Intelligence Ministry are more accountable and women play a more active role in society and the economy.
Young people, in particular, enjoy far greater freedom in terms of how they dress, what music they listen to and how they interact with the opposite sex than previous generations.
REFORMIST SLOGANS: “When I was a student to talk to a girl you had to be 10 feet apart and both looking away from each other,” said Saeed Leylaz, sales manager at a state-run truck manufacturer.
“When I go to universities today I see boys and girls sitting down together chatting and swapping music. It’s a different world,” he said.
With typical modesty Khatami frequently says his greatest achievement is that many former hardliners now adopt the language of reform, a fact confirmed by the campaign platforms of most of this month’s election hopefuls.
“I am against state interference in people’s private lives,” candidate Mohsen Rezaie said, who led Iran’s hardline Revolutionary Guards from 1981 to 1997. “I want to institutionalize freedoms and democracy in the country.”
Khatami’s reluctant decision to run for a second term despite his sense of impending doom typified what close aides say is a keenly developed sense of duty and self-sacrifice.
But Khatami’s strong aversion to confrontation, particularly if it could lead to bloodshed, was a weakness that his hardline opponents, who held no such qualms, were quick to exploit.
Countless political allies, pro-reform journalists and newspapers suffered at the hands of the hardline judiciary while Khatami made barely a complaint.
“Those power-seeking fanatics who ignored the people’s demands and resisted reforms, they owe me. The ones who destroyed Iran’s image in the world, they owe me,” Khatami said in an unusual venting of frustration last year.
University students, in particular, cannot forgive Khatami for failing to protect them from arrest and assault during pro-democracy protests in 1999, 2002 and 2003.
“Khatami, what happened to your promised freedoms?”, “Students are wise, they detest Khatami,” groups shouted when he spoke at Tehran University last year.
LET DOWN: Many Iranians now speak of feeling let down by Khatami who was plucked from relative obscurity as head of the National Library to take the presidential elections by storm in 1997.
“He deceived us. He promised change but we should have realised he’s just another mullah who wanted to protect the system,” said Ali Reza, a 37-year-old computer engineer.
Even his younger, more outspoken, brother Mohammad Reza Khatami condemned the president this month for acquiescing to the blatant manipulation of 2004 parliamentary elections when hardliners disqualified hundreds of reformists from the race.
But while conservatives have stolen many of Khatami’s slogans in an effort to boost their low popularity, reformists are growing more radical in their demands.
Many political and student leaders who once backed Khatami’s vision of gradual change from within now support a boycott of the election and say a referendum on the constitution to challenge the power of unelected clerics must be held.—Reuters
