Goodbye to the Republic

RoozOnline:

Mehrdad Sheibani

“Dispose the Republic” and “dismantle the republican structures” are the two principal terms used by those opposing the review of the Iranian constitution, currently a heated subject and an agenda item in the country. When journalist and political activist Shamsol Vaezin told Rooz that Khatami was the very last president Iran would have, right after Ahmadinejad’s presidential victory, he had precisely the same thing in mind as a warning. “Whether you call it a conspiracy, project or what not, when the authority of the president was reduced to that of an office – a reference to Khamenei’s categorization – work began to undermine the chief executive. Today, the Majlis (i.e. Iranian Parliament) has a constitution reform bill ready that it plans to send to leader Khamenei. So while this draft was obviously initiated well before Ahmadinejad’s victory, insiders have revealed that it contains provisions to practically consolidate all the power in a few appointed centers, and thus turn the elected offices into appointed positions. So, in the words of Ghasem Ravanbakhsh, editor of a publication belonging to ultra conservative cleric Mesbah Yazdi from Qom’s Theology School, “pseudo-clerics like Khatami who have damaged Islam the most” will no longer be allowed to take high elected offices, while those like Ahmadinejad who sits in absolute sublimation when visiting Yazdi will be welcome to such positions. Ahmadinejad announces Yazdi’s goals very clearly when he says that “all orders in the Islamic Republic must be based on the Qoran and the tradition.”

The editor of Yazdi’s paper says that the old orders are defunct and Ahmadinejad has been brought to office to review and implement the derailed values to lay the ground for the return of the missing Prophet, as Shiite scripture calls. All of these drives are really based on an earlier attempt to change the “Islamic Republic” into an “Islamic Administration” or State, which was officially introduced during the last (i.e. sixth) Majlis but retracted because of public and press pressures.

But what is odd about this plan is that even many clerics on the right do not support the president who is supposed to pave the way for the return of the missing Prophet. From the 45 cleric deputies that belong to the right, only 19 paid a visit to the president, whose struggle to form his cabinet continues. From the names that have been announced for cabinet positions, only Kayhan newspaper and Passdaran Revolutionary Guard Corps have been rewarded for their support of the president, and the fight for the other positions goes on behind very thick closed doors.

The Majlis these days however seems not to be a major player, but wants to by pushing to get Haji Babai as Ahmadinejad’s Minister of Education. He is a teacher who had once said he would be minister, just as Bani Sadr had once said that he would be Iran’s first president, which he was. But Ahmadinejad too is not short on problems. The latest is that he has not been issued a visa to the US to attend the UN’s annual General Assembly meeting later this year, probably because he was among the hostage takers in 1980 that took the American embassy and its staff hostage for 555 days.

On the nuclear issue, the news keeps rolling. Hossein Shariatmadari writes in Kayhan newspaper belonging to the Islamic extreme conservatists that while the Americans and the Europeans were threatening to take Iran to the US Security Council for months, as soon as Iran ended its self imposed freeze and thus began its uranium reprocessing activities, have now gone silent, accepting defeat. The Europeans seem to be searching for some solution and thus the EU foreign policy advisor proposes that European governments go to China to convince it to stop buying oil from Iran. The Russians too are now changing their tune and ask Iran to stop its fuel activities and purchase their nuclear fuel needs from them and continue their talks with the Europeans.

With such crises looming over the horizon and fast approaching the mainland, unrest continues in Kurdestan while Jomhurie Eslami newspaper attributes the unrest in Javanrood to a mere band of thugs. The Iranian Labor News Agency (ILNA) reminds its readers that what these “thugs” are asking is precisely what the Kurdish people have been calling for for years.

On the human rights situation, a group of students who were members of the Central Council of the Islamic Association of Kurd city were condemned and flogged in public for insulting the Imam and spreading rumors.

And all of the above events and more are happening in a country where over 20 million people who did not go to the last presidential polls, are unhappy with the state of the affairs and desire something completely different from what Ahmadinejad or Rafsanjani had promised.

Mehrdad Sheibani is a seasoned journalist and commentator living in exile.