Presidential election in Iran 1997

Election winner Mohammad Chātamī (1997)

The defeated Ali Akbar Nateq Nuri

The Iranian presidential elections in 1997 took place on May 23, 1997. Surprisingly, the reformer Mohammad Chātami won the election .

prehistory

The election was preceded by the second term of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani . The country was in bad shape. The political image of Iran was shaped by high national debts, foreign policy isolation and a growing conservative legal scholar Ali Khamene'i . Rafsanjani was constitutionally not allowed to run again after two terms in office, and the Iranian population was hoping for a political change. However, the Guardian Council rejected 234 of the 238 candidates who wanted to stand for election.

Former Minister of Islamic Culture, Mohammad Chātami, was allowed to run for election despite his reputation as a moderate intellectual. He had to be persuaded to run because he withdrew from politics in 1992 in protest against the rigorous machinations of the radical government and has been director of Tehran's national library ever since . He had previously been dismissed as Minister for Islamic Culture by the conservatively dominated parliament. After the Guardian Council had approved his candidacy, he led an election campaign with liberal slogans on women's rights and freedom of expression. In this way he was able to win the sympathy of the reformist Iranians, whose number had steadily increased in the years after Ayatollah Khomeini's death.

The favorite, however, was Ali Akbar Nateq Nuri , the speaker of parliament and candidate for the religious leadership around Chāmene'ī. In addition to Chātamī and Nateq Nuri, Mohammad Mohammadi Reyschahri , a former revolutionary judge, and former prosecutor Reza Zavarchi, the only non-cleric, ran for the office of president. Reyschahri and Zavarchi were considered to have no chance even before the election.

Result and consequences

Mohammad Chātamī was able to unite almost 70% of the votes in a triumphant election victory. The turnout was 79.92%.

	be right	percent
Mohammad Chātami	20,138,784	69.1%
Ali Akbar Nateq Nuri	7,248,317	24.87%
Reza Zavarchi	772.707	2.6
Mohammad Mohammadi Reyschahri	744.205	2.6
total	29,466,487	100%

With Chātamī's election victory, the reformers established themselves in the Iranian government. However, they were faced with a conservatively dominated parliament and the spiritual leader Alī Chāmene'ī and his institutions. Nevertheless, Chātamī's election victory was celebrated in the West as a self-made departure from Iran's political isolation.

In fact, for many observers, the election proved that the democratic elements in the Iranian state system were strong enough to trigger political change. Chātamī became a symbol of freedom of expression , democracy , equality and critical dialogue - hopes that he was ultimately unable to fulfill.

See also

• History of Iran since 1979

Web links

• Iran Elections: An Overview (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Christopher Lockwood: Calls for reform grow louder as Iran goes to polls ; Electronic Telegraph No. 729, May 24, 1997. (English)
2. ↑ Michael Rubin: Iran's Myth of Moderation ( Memento from June 18, 2009 in the Internet Archive ); March 18, 2002. (English)
3. ↑ Christopher Lockwood: Election farce as Iran chooses its president ; Electronic Telegraph No. 727, May 22, 1997. (English)
4. ↑ Birgit Cerha: The agitator and the intellectual ; In: Die Zeit, 21/1997
5. ↑ princeton.edu ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 1997 Presidential Election , accessed February 2, 2013 
6. ↑ Johannes Reissner: Stability Analysis Iran PDF  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; In: Sigrid Faath (Ed.): Stability Problems of Central States; Hamburg 2003