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The Rise and Fall of Fa'ezeh Hashemi: Women in Iranian Elections

Author(s): Ziba Mir-HosseiniSource: Middle East Report, No. 218 (Spring, 2001), pp. 8-11Published by: Middle East Research and Information ProjectStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1559303Accessed: 08/09/2010 10:08

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U P F R O N T

T h e R i s e F a l l o f Fa ' ezeh H a s h e m i

W o m e n in I r a n i a n Elec t ions

Z i b a M ir-Hosseini

The 2000 Majles elections, in which he reformists ained a landslide victory, were a further mportant tep in

the arduous ransition rom heocracy o democracy, process that will doubtless continue or some time to

come. The painful hallenges of this time of transition were nowhere more evident han n the case of Fa'ezeh

Hashemi.

oth politics and women's political activities are radi-cally different under the Islamic Republic of Iran fromwhat they were before the 1979 Revolution. But one

fundamental fact has not changed: Politics is still thedomain of men, and women who enter the field tend tobe related-either by blood or by marriage-to promi-nent men. Most women politicians are hostages, vul-nerable to the political fortunes of men, and only a fewhave managed to break free. This vulnerability is revealed

during parliamentary elections, when in some ways itparallels the vulnerability of the people as a whole, whohave been treated as political minors by the theocraticpower elite.

The unexpected victory of Mohammad Khatami in the1997 presidential elections changed the battle lines and therules of the game. It brought about a reformist movementand a free press, which tried, against intense and sometimesviolent opposition from part of the clerical establishment,to democratize the Islamic Republic. The 2000 Majles elec-tions, in which the reformists gained a landslide victory, werea further important step in the arduous transition from the-ocracy to democracy, a process that will doubtless continuefor some time to come.

The painful challenges of this time of transition werenowhere more evident than in the case of Fa'ezeh Hashemi.Her rise in the elections of 1996 and fall in those of 2000can tell us something of how far Iranian society moved inthe intervening four years, and can also give us an indica-tion of the challenges that underline the May 2001 presi-Ziba Mir-Hosseini, afreelance nthropologist, esearcher ndfilmmaker, s a researchassociate t the Centrefor ear and Middle Eastern tudies, OAS, n London.

dential election-an election which is likely to turn into areferendum on the future of theocracy in Iran.

The Emergence f the "Reformists"As the younger daughter of then President Ali Akbar

Hashemi-Rafsanjani, Fa'ezeh entered politics in the courseof the 1996 elections for the Fifth Majles. She was the onlywoman on the list of the Kargozaran-e Sazandegi (Servantsof Construction). The Kargozaran emerged that year fol-lowing a disagreement between Rafsanjani and the power-ful rightist coalition over the inclusion of five candidates hehad nominated for their election list for Tehran.' Angeredby their rejection, Rafsanjani gave the go-ahead for the for-mation of a moderate rightist grouping, to run on a plat-form of "construction," he motto of Rafsanjani's wo termsas president. He did not know then that this would lay thefoundation for a serious challenge to himself. The Servantsof Construction included two of Rafsanjani's proteges wholater became the backbone of the "reformist movement":Gholam-Hossein Karbaschi (then the powerful and popu-lar mayor of Tehran), and Ataollah Mohajerani (who be-came Khatami's minister of culture and Islamic guidance).

Fa'ezeh brought excitement and glamour to the 1996 elec-tions. She broke the unwritten dress code for women politi-cians by wearing-underneath the obligatory (for publicfigures) chador-jeans and a patterned scarf tied so that herchin was exposed. She promoted women's sports and advo-cated women's rights, identifying herself squarely as a "mod-ernist" in the long-running battle between modernity andtradition. This made her the darling of the "reformists"

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(as they became known afterKhatami's ictory in May 1997)and the target of attacks by theiropponents, the "conservatives."Her pre-election rallies were ha-rassed by the Ansar-e Hezbollah,a newly emerged pressure rouprumored o be under "conserva-tive" control. "Ayesheh ame bycamel and Fa'ezeh s coming bymotor-bike (Ayesheh ba shotor,Fa'ezeh a motor)," hey chanted,alluding o the Prophet's ifewholed the Battle of the Camel againstAli, the first Shi'a Imam. Photo-graphs of her cycling and skatingin support f women's right o par-ticipate n sports were circulatedas proof of her "Islamically ncor-rect" ways.

All his eemed o ncrease aeze's

popularity. hepublicwelcomed er.To them he was resh ir n the staleand suffocating orld nvisioned ythe cerics. n the polls, hewon thesecondhighest ote n Tehran. twasrumored hat he had n fact toppedthe poll, but the conservative andi-date Nateq-Nouri-who was eport-edly being groomed o be the nextpresident-was ecared hewinner:awoman efating cleric n the capi-tal would have been an intolerableblow o the deeply ooted atriarchyin the Iranianpolitical ystei. Withinthis patriarchal ystem, Fa'ezeh adto defend women'srights uring erterm n parliament.

The FifthMajlesFrustrates eformThe Fifth Majles had the highestnumber of women deputies ever

A over hoto fFa'ezeh ashemirom anan, women's agazinen ran. hisssue an he irst xclusiventerviewwithHashemi.

(14), yet t proved o have heworst ecord n women's rights.2Its newly created Women's Commission, n the name of thedefense fwomen's ights, roposed wo bills hat became nfa-mous for their anti-women lant: one stipulated hat doctorscould only treat patients f the same ex,and he second imedto prevent he press rom printing eatures n women, and tohalt he ivelydebate n women's rights. Both billswere part ofa concerted ffort by the conservatives o frustrate he reformspromised y Khatami, y using his own slogan: "the rule oflaw." Fa'ezeh nd other reformists n the Majles pposed bothbills, but they were n a minority. he two aws were ratified nJuly 1998, but were o far removed rom he reality f Iraniansociety hat t was impossible o implement hem.

The following year he Majles ntroduced nother bill toenable he conservative-dominated judiciary o prosecute e-formist journalists. he press was now the main battlefield.In July 1998, Fa'ezeh erself ad aunched Zan, the first-everwomen's ewspaper n Iran, ut t too fell victim o the struggle.In April 1999, the Revolutionary ourt ordered ts closure;one pretext was that t had printed part of a Nowruz IranianNew Year) message o the Iranian people rom Farah ahlavi,the exiled ormer Empress. he whole text of the message-prefaced y a denunciation-had in fact been printed arlierby a paper upporting he conservatives. a'ezeh efended erpaper n court, and the reformist press tood up for Zan, butto no avail. Her father emained ilent.

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Opponents of reform did not hesitate o use naked vio-lence. During autumn 1998, a number of pro-reform n-tellectuals nd writers were brutally murdered n what cameto be known as the "serial killings." A list circulated withthe names of 150 intellectuals and writers whose murderwas said to be a "religious uty" or guardians f the valuesof the Revolution. The country was gripped by fear. Thenin July 1999, following a peaceful tudent demonstration

againsthe

passingof the

pressbill and the closure of the

reformist paper Salam, uniformed and "plain-clothes" o-lice stormed a Tehran University dormitory. The securityservices' unprovoked iolence on this occasion nfuriatedthe students. Universities n Tehran, Tabriz and elsewheresaw demonstrations eminiscent f those leading up to the1978-79 Revolution.

The 2000 Majles ElectionsFa'ezeh Hashemi ided with the reformists during all theseupheavals. ut in the runup o the February 000 elections,she ost significant eformist, tudent and youth support, e-

cause he did not distance erselffrom her father's ecision at theend of 1999 to enter he parlia- Take aackmentary ace.The conservatives, Taen abachaving ailed or three years o si- their defeat, thlence he reformists nd heir press,nominated afsanjani s heir op struck back incandidate. Despite their differ- b theenceswith him, they awhim as blamed h e re ltheir ast chance o avoid osing pers for theircontrol of the Sixth Majles. Thereformist press ook up the chal- polls and seenlenge,makingRafsanjani's oliti- to a revencal record-his undemocratic style to reveasmajles peaker 1980-1989) nd ing them.as president (1989-97), his be-hind-the-scenes ealings, is vastwealth, issuspected inkswith he1998 serial killings-regular opics of their editorials nd es-says.More daring eformists uch asAkbar Ganji, Abbas Abdiand Mohammad Quchani challenged Rafsanjani, ho dis-missed he journalists' oncerns as "the work of Satan," opublic debate. A full-scale press war ensued between he re-formist nd conservative papers, with Rafsanjani sthe mainsubject. A dutiful daughter, a'ezeh ook her ather's ide-anact of political uicide hat she undertook despite repeatedwarnings n the reformist ress.

Fa'ezeh Hashemi's place was taken by women such asJamileh Kadivar, ho has established strong inks with thereformists. n February 999, she nominated herself or theCity Council in Tehran, and was elected. Her husbandAtaollah Mohajerani, Khatami's minister of culture and Is-lamic guidance, nurtured press hat was freer or a whilethan at any time in Iranian history, or which he was im-peached in the Majles in spring 1999-unsuccessfully.3Kadivar s a household name. Jamileh's rother Mohsen, a

b!ief

rni

g1

reformist cleric and student of the silenced AyatollahMontazeri, wrote a critique of the doctrine of the absoluterule of the jurist (velayat-e motlaqeh-e aqih) from withinShi'a theology, omparing he unchecked powers f the Vali-ye Faqih with those of absolute monarchs. He was arrestedin June 1998 and, following a much-publicized rial n theSpecial Clerical Court, sentenced o 18 months prison or"insulting he Islamic Republic" nd "disturbing minds."

Just weekbefore he February 000 elections, he reformistnewspapers, hich had assumed he role of political parties,issued listof 30 candidates, hequota orTehran. ive womenwere on this ist:Jamileh Kadivar as one of them, but Fa'ezehHashemi was not. Jamileh lsoappeared n the ists of candi-dates ssued by the powerful nd pro-reform tudent networkBureau or Fostering nity (Daftar-e ahkim-e Vahdat), ndthe Participation ront (Jebheh-e Mosharekat) eaded byMohammad Reza Khatami, he president's rother; bothgroups esisted llpressure o include Rafsanjani, he top can-didate or he anti-reform camp, n their ists. The Kargozarandid nclude him and alsohis daughter a'ezeh. n this way, orthe first ime since he Revolution, he lists produced y po-

liticalgroups ecamemutually x-clusive. In previous elections,

1the cale of some candidates, such asy the scale o.f Rafsanjani, ould ppear n theconservatives lists of all political roups.A high urnout nd a landslide

u I force. They reformist ictory evealed he ex-m 5Atr af tent to which people had trustedirmilewspa- thereformist ress. nTehran, 8

failure in the of the 30 candidates n the re-formist ist gained enough votesed determined in the first round to enter Parlia-

byeli

at-ment. Jamileh Kadivar olled he

by l second highest vote, afterMohammad Reza Khatami andfollowed by Ali-Reza Nouri,Abdollah Nouri's brother.Rafsanjani craped by, placing

thirtieth on the Tehran ist. Fa'ezeh id not make t at all.For Rafsanjani, ho had ambitions o succeed he currentleader the Vali-ye Faqih, Ayatollah Khamene'i), his was ahumiliating xperience. t became even more embarrassingwhen the reformist papers hinted at vote-rigging n somepolling stations, and revealed hat Fa'ezeh ad written a let-ter to the electoral ffice asking or her votes to be countedin her father's ame.

Apart rom Jamileh Kadivar, he four other women fromthe press ist, along with two others, entered the Sixth MajlesforTehran. heywerejoined by fivemore women lected romDashtestan, sfahan, Orumiyeh, Mashhad nd Shiraz. All 11women are reformists, elonging o different endencies, utmostly nominated ythe Participation ront.Elevenwomen sfewer han he 14 in the Fifth Majles; hiscan largely eattrib-uted to the fact that the reformist ists included ew femalenames. Moreover, one of the women on the conservative istswere lected n 2000. In the Fifth Majles, 0 of the 14 women

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electedwere nominated ydifferent rightist roups, nd sevenof these ater oined he anti-reformist amp.

Reassured nd perhaps over-confident fter the clearlymassive public support or their candidates, he reformistpress grew bolder n their confrontation with Rafsanjani,the only conservative andidate lected from a large city.Even his election was challenged: he reformist andidatewho had polled thirty-first n Tehran lodged a complaintwith the election body. Recounting f the Tehran otes wenton for over two months, and as the day approached whenthe Majles was due to open (June 7), the Council of Guard-ians-the conservative-dominated upervisory ody-stilldelayed atifying he result.

Taken aback by the scale of their defeat, he conservativesstruck back n full force. They blamed he reformist ewspa-pers for their ailure n the polls and seemed determined otake revenge yeliminating hem. Severalprominent eform-ist journalists ere detained, nd n spring 000, in what hasbecome known as a "creeping oup d'etat," ver20 reformistnewspapers nd ournals were closed down. Deprived f theirmain platform, he reformists ow feared he election esults

would be cancelled. A crisis more serious han the 1999 stu-dent revolt oomed, but was averted through he nterventionof the leader, who ordered he Council of Guardians o endthe Tehran ecount nd announce he results.

The Tehran lection esult was inally nnounced just a fewdaysbefore heopening f the Majles. herewere omechanges:two reformist andidates ere replaced y conservatives ndRafsanjani aspromoted rom hirtieth lace o twentieth. hiswas a last desperate move aimed at increasing is chance ofelection as Majles peaker, ut it backfired n the public eye.On the eveof the opening f the Majles,Rafsanjani ecided owithdraw altogether, o avoid he possible urther mbarrass-ment of having his credentials rejected y the Majles.

In the months fter heelections, heconservativesdisplayedtheir vindictiveness. More reformist ewspapers ere closed,and most of the reformist riters ho had challenged afsanjaniwere arrested nd thrown n jail on one excuse r another. t-tacks n the Majleswere eportedly lanned. he annual meet-ing of the Bureau o Foster Unity, held in Khorramabad nAugust, was violently isrupted yconservative-backedthugs.Meanwhile he damaging evelations ontinued. One of themost damning was the confession fAmir-Farshad brahimi,a breakaway ember f the notorious Ansar-e Hezbollah. Hisvideotaped onfession, widely circulated, evealed he gang'slink with the conservatives, nd even that they had receivedmoney rom he Kargozaran o disrupt heirpre-election alliesfor Fifth Majles.The group also ook money o film Fa'ezeh'scampaign orwomen'sright ocycle nd odemonstrate againsther. According o Ebrahimi, argozaran's nalysis as hat heAnsar nd other xtremist gangswere o unpopular hat who-ever hey harassed nd disrupted ould gain he people's ote.

Challenging atriarchyEbrahimi's evelations-whether rue or not-further dis-tanced Fa'ezeh Hashemi from the reformist camp. Her

political career for the time being seems to be over. She isthe very product of the patrimonial style of politics in Iran,which is now openly debated and challenged by the reform-ist movement. What brought her into politics was her fa-ther-who continues to see himself as the nation's patriarch.What ended her political career was her inability to breakaway from her father's style of politics, and to join the newone proposed by the reformists.

What could Fa'ezeh do? How could she abandon her fa-ther? Her dilemma and her vulnerability are encoded in herappearance and actions. Her jeans and chador, her advocacyof women's rights and her disregard or democratic principlesare only the outer manifestations of the painful challengesand contradictions of a time of transition. These contradic-tions will suffuse the May 2001 presidential elections, as theydid the Majles elections 15 months earlier, but this time witha new impact and intensity. The clash between forces of the-ocracy and democracy was thrown into a sharper relief as theSixth Majles, called the "Majles of Reforms" (majles eslahat),took the place of the press as the battleground. The theo-cratic forces have so far managed to frustrate most of the

legislative moves of the Sixth Majles, but in turn the Majleshas not only been chipping away at the patriarchal olitics ofthe Islamic Republic but has questioned the very Islamic le-

gitimacy of gender inequality. At the end of 2000, the Majlesratified a bill to eliminate discrimination between female andmale students in regard o scholarships o study abroad. Thefirst bill of its kind that the Majles reformists brought o honortheir pre-election promise to do away with gender inequali-ties in law-put them into direct confrontation with the cleri-cal establishment. A number of high ranking clerics wroteopen letters to the Majles demanding withdrawal of the bill.The supervisory Council of Guardians-the main bastion oftheocracy-rejected the bill as "un-Islamic." he Council of-

fered no legal ustification or its rejection, but could no longerignore the impact of its decision on people, for which it blamesthe Majles. Ayatollah Meshkini, the Friday prayer eader inQom, said it all in his sermon: "Ratification of such a bill bythe Majles causes the youths antagonism towards he clericalestablishment and the Council of Guardians."4

In a country where over 60 percent of the population areunder 25, this antagonism is the main force behind the re-form movement. It is a winning card in the hands of itscurrent eader, Mohammad Khatami, for the May elections.Will he use it? At the time of writing, he had not even de-clared his candidacy. U

Endnotes

1 In the Majles lections, n the absence f political parties, actions and groups publish istsof their favored andidates or every constituency. Each city and provincial egion orms aconstituency with a number of seats according o population. Voters enter the names ofcandidates up to the total number of the seats n their constituency. f the constituency as30 seats, he top 30 vote-getters re elected.

2 Haleh Esfandiari, The Majles and Women's ssues n the Islamic Republic of Iran," nMahnaz Afkhami nd Erika Friedl, ds., In the Eyeofthe Storm: Women n Post-RevolutionaryIran (Syracuse, Y: Syracuse University Press, 1994).

3 Attempts to remove him continued, and in December 2000 Khatami accepted hisresignation.

4 For a report, ee Hayat-e Now, January 5, 2001.

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