IRAN: Election blues for reformists

Iranians are getting set to go to the polls Friday for much-anticipated parliamentary elections, as we describe in Sunday's LAT.

The reformists that once captivated those seeking peaceful change within Iran's unique clerical system have been all but shut out. By some estimates, they're only being allowed to compete for 30% of seats and lucky if they win more than 50 out of 290 contests.

Still, they'll soldier on, said Mohammed Ali Abtahi, a prominent Iranian reformist and cleric who is also one of the country's most well-known bloggers.

He has urged those seeking change in Iran not to boycott. He spoke briefly to the LAT last week:

Withdrawal from ballot boxes does not solve anything. In the last presidential election, in first round, the difference between Ahmadinejad and the next reformist candidate was only 300,000. Because 11 million eligible voters stayed away, the elected president was Ahamadinejad. So the current president is the product of their boycotting.

He also said boycotting this election would make it that much tougher to put up candidates against Ahmadinejad in 2009 presidential elecitons:

If we boycott now, we will have no chance to present reformist presidential candidates. We cannot boycott one election and encourage people to participate in another one.

Still, the mood on the street is trending against the reformists. Rural conservatives are enthusiastically embracing Ahmadinejad as well as competing hardliners who call themselves "principalists." By all accounts, they are much better organized than the reformists.

In moderate, middle-class Tehran, meanwhile, political apathy is all too evident. The focus is not on elections but on making ends meet or catching big soccer matches on television.

— Ramin Mostaghim in Tehran

Photo: An Iranian woman distributes leaflets of reformist legislative candidate, Alireza Mahjoub, in downtown Tehran. Credit: BEHROUZ MEHRI/AFP/Getty Images