Khatami acknowledges reform bill finished

Iranian President Mohammad Khatami acknowledged the failure of the pillars of his presidency today, conceding his two key reform proposals that sought to check the powers of hard-liners could not be salvaged.

One of the bills was aimed at increasing presidential powers in order to stop constitutional violations by hard-liners.

The other sought to bar the hard-line oversight body, the Guardian Council, from disqualifying parliamentary and presidential election candidates.

“I withdraw the bills and declare that I have met with defeat,” Khatami said in Tehran after a Cabinet meeting.

The Guardian Council, which vets all parliamentary legislation, rejected the bills in April and May of 2003, saying they were unconstitutional and against Islam.

Khatami acknowledged that there would be no breakthrough in working out acceptable legislation and that efforts to do so were finished.

“I am withdrawing (the presidential powers bill) so that the few powers that the president has now are not eliminated,” he said.

Khatami repeatedly has complained he is powerless to stop hard-liners, who have blocked all reform legislation, shut down more than 100 liberal publications and detained dozens of activists and writers for criticising unelected hard-line clerics.

Reformists also accused the Guardian Council, which oversees elections, of disqualifying their candidates for last month’s parliamentary elections - including many incumbent lawmakers – to ensure control of what had been a reform-oriented parliament.

Reformists boycotted elections they said were rigged to allow them no chance of winning, and hard-liners easily retook control of parliament.

Without the parliament, Khatami and his Cabinet lost a key bastion of support.

The president said the Guardian Council was even refusing to recognise the powers the constitution has already given to the president.

“The bills I presented, unfortunately, met the strong wall of the Guardian Council. The council even breached its own definite view that the president is responsible for implementing the constitution,” he said.

Under Iran’s constitution, the president is responsible for enforcing the constitution. Khatami repeatedly has told the hard-line judiciary that imprisoning writers without trial or trying their cases in closed sessions violates the constitution, but his words have been ignored.

“Let the people know who is their president and what powers he has so that they keep their expectations accordingly,” Khatami said.

“People should know that in the view of some (the Guardian Council), the president is not Iran’s number one official after the supreme leader,” he said.

Rather, he added, it views the president merely as a co-ordinator among other institutions.

In acknowledging he would now be unable to salvage legislation for meaningful political reform, Khatami also lashed out at the Guardian Council as harming Iran’s Islamic government.

“Members of the Guardian Council should not weaken the system,” he said.