Part 15: People Stop Participating

While the relatively free elections of the late 1990s saw widespread participation among the population, the elections in the mid 2000s were marked by public apathy after conservatives clamped down on the democratic process. Public participation in the Islamic Republic plummeted as a far smaller percentage of eligible voters took part in the elections.

Figure 4.1 shows the overall downward trend of public participation in presidential, local, and parliamentary elections from 1997 to 2005 by tracking the percentage of eligible voters who actually voted in elections. The points mark the actual percentage of participation while a regression line demonstrates the overall downward trend.

Figure 4.1 Percentage of the eligible population participating in elections from 1997 to 2005

The chart demonstrates that a significantly smaller percentage of the population participated in the Islamic Republic as the conservatives began to clamp down on democratic rights ensured in the constitution. The public participated in the system in greater numbers when they believed that their votes had a real chance at changing the regime. Once conservatives made it clear that they were not going to allow the elected branches of government to bring about significant changes, the public decreased its participation in elections.

This trend means that less people would work within the confines of the regime when they believed their votes would not bring about change. The fact that large numbers of people would abandon participating in the Islamic Republic would foreshadow future protests against the regime when elections were viewed as completely meaningless. Once people believed that elections were fraudulent, then opposition to the regime would work outside of the confines of the regime to bring change by taking to the streets.

In the mean time even though segments of the reform movement had abandoned participating in the regime, a significant portion still wanted to work within the elected channels to bring change. However, they did not have enough support to override the resurgence of the conservatives ultimately losing out again in the 2006 local elections and the 2008 Majlis elections. While the reformists did not know how to respond to the clamp down by the conservatives, they did not give up contesting elections regrouping for the looming 2009 presidential election.

The Iranian people may have participated less in the electoral process once the conservatives struck back, but they still had to live with the outcome of those elections. Even with the failure of reformist electoral victories to bring change to the regime, anger at the direction of the country under Ahmadinejad meant that the public would be lured back into the electoral process.

Elections no longer had to be about changing policy in the Islamic Republic as long as they offered the possibility of changing the person who was president. This scenario would set the stage for the final showdown between a resurgent reform movement and the conservative coalition that wanted to maintain its authoritarian gains. What resulted was a complete breakdown of the Islamist coalition that had maintained the Islamic Republic for 30 years leading to the return of revolution in Iran.

Part 14: Ahmadinejad Wins the 2005 Election

The final piece of the puzzle for the conservative coalition was the 2005 presidential election. It would prove to be the most interesting elections in the history of the Islamic Republic up to that point and would set the stage for the monumental presidential election of 2009. The 2005 election showed the shifting sands of political loyalties in Iran and cemented the fault lines between different factions in the regime.

Former President Rafsanjani announced that he would once again run in the election, but he would not become the consensus candidate showing the highly fractured nature of the regime. While Rafsanjani had originally aligned himself with Khamenei and conservatives during his presidency, he had grown distant from the conservative movement with the rise of the neo-conservatives. As part of the neo-conservatives appeal, they campaigned heavily on a populist appeal to win over the pious lower classes of Iran. They heavily criticized Rafsanjani for being corrupt and for the failure of his free market approach to help the masses of Iranians. Rafsanjani would run from the middle distancing himself from the conservatives, but also not embracing the reformist cause either.

The traditional conservatives under Khamenei would not endorse Rafsanjani and instead put forth Ali Larijani as the standard bearer for the regime. The neo-conservatives would select Ahmadinejad as their candidate in the election showing an independence from the traditional conservatives and the regime’s elite. Since a majority of votes was required to be elected in the first round, the highly fractured nature of all parts of the regime meant that a runoff was inevitable. As a result, the two factions of the conservative movement could put forth different candidates, as long as they united in the runoff.

It was not just the conservative coalition that was divided; the reformists were in disarray after a series of electoral disasters. The elite of the reform movement favored Mostafa Moin as their candidate and he was nominated by the leading reformist parties. Yet former speaker of the Majlis Karroubi also ran in the reformist camp and he was the one that was able to quickly gain momentum in the race.

The various factions in the Islamic Republic had never been so divided between each other or within themselves, and this chaotic situation created the perfect storm for a dark horse candidate to emerge. Ahmadinejad had very little name recognition at the beginning of the campaign and few expected him to be a significant player in the election. Yet his campaign targeted the poor masses of Iran who cared less about political freedoms and more about basic economic concerns. He presented himself as a servant of the people from a modest background and spoke out against the corruption of regime elite embodied in Rafsanjani.

Ahmadinejad’s campaign was able to gain traction given the division within the reformists and the unpopularity of traditional conservatives among the population. After the first round of voting, Rafsanjani was first with a mere 21% of the vote, but it was Ahmadinejad who surprisingly placed second to make it to the runoff with 19% of the vote. Karroubi and Moin split the reformist vote with Karroubi’s late momentum giving him 17% of the vote to Moin’s 14%. Larijani received just 6% of the vote showing how unpopular the traditional conservatives had become among the Iranian people.

Interestingly the split within the reformist camp meant that Ahmadinejad and not Karroubi would make it to the runoff. Had the reformists agreed on one candidate, then they almost certainly would have got the most votes in the first round since Karroubi and Moin’s vote total was 31%. However, the reformist division meant that the first ever presidential runoff election in the Islamic Republic occurred between the pragmatic conservative Rafsanjani and the neo-conservative Ahmadinejad.

At first most observers gave the upstart Ahmadinejad little chance to defeat one of the most powerful men in Iran who had previously won two presidential elections. However in the short runoff campaign, Ahmadinejad attacked Rafsanjani for the widely held belief that he had attained much of his wealth through corruption. Ahmadinejad by contrast lived a humble lifestyle and played up the fact that he had little personal wealth in comparison to one of the richest men in Iran.

Reformist leaders urged their followers to vote for Rafsanjani to keep the presidency from the neo-conservatives, but Rafsanjani’s past authoritarian tendencies meant that many reformist voters would stay home on Election Day. Ahmadinejad campaigned in all parts of the country gaining momentum among rural voters who often felt that the elite of the regime had forgotten about them. Rafsanjani by comparison barely left Tehran reinforcing the image that he was the ultimate insider who knew little about the suffering of ordinary people.

In the end, Ahmadinejad scored a decisive win garnering 62% of the vote and stunning the establishment of the Islamic Republic. His victory demonstrated that the neo-conservatives were a powerful force within the regime and that they were quickly becoming the dominant party in their coalition with traditional conservatives. Rafsanjani would argue that there was electoral manipulation, but the population never backed his candidacy enough to care. “Although the conservatives had no compunction about rigging votes, Ahmadinejad’s victory could not be attributed to fraud. A largely exhausted population unimpressed with Rafsanjani’s reincarnation and disillusioned with the reform movement was willing to concede the state to the conservatives”.