How the Principlist Camp Failed to Wrest Power from Rouhani
Eight month before the presidential election, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had openly warned against polarization of the society and thus recommended ex-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to keep his eyes off the race. For the last three presidential races, Ahmadinejad had posited himself at opposite pole with heavyweight Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani. Whereas he won the first direct showdown in 2005, a second proxy race in 2009 proved too controversial to be labeled a victory. In 2013, Iranians embraced the Ayatollah's cause of moderation by voting for his double Hassan Rouhani.
The Supreme Leader’s decision to openly ban Ahmadinejad from 2017 election was because he found the comeback inexpedient for both the former president and for the country. With Rouhani's main potential contender barred, the Principlists began their quest to find, among hopefuls of the front, a man capable not only of fully mobilizing their voter base, but of adding enough swing voters to take the election to a run-off. The main aspiration for the Principlist camp, stressed in almost everything they said and wrote in the past year, was to block Rouhani's reelection. Everything else was of less priority. Some Principlist factions leant toward Ebrahim Raisi behind closed doors, partly driven by a vacuum in their camp and partly illusioned by Raisi’s campaign, who was appointed by the Supreme Leader as the official custodian of the holy shrine of Imam Reza, the eighth Shia imam, and considered as a potential successor for Ayatollah Khamenei.
Hashemi Rafsanjani's unforeseen demise in early August further emboldened the Principlists, as they found it a full-blown breather from the Ahmadinejad-Hashemi dipole, an opportunity to be seized immediately. In an attempt to avoid internal divides that had caused them the previous defeats, a majority of parties and personalities within the front gathered in a seasonal assembly dubbing itself the Popular Front of Revolutionary Forces, or its Persian acronym, Jamna. From the very beginning, the new front's founders declared it would function as a bottom-up democratic mechanism to forge a consensus in the camp. With much ado and drama, the front staged an mock competition that eventually only produced the most anticipated results: twice-presidential runner-up and Tehran mayor Mohammad-Bagher Qalibaf and Ebrahim Raisi.
On the other side of the race stood moderate President Rouhani with Reformist allies. Ever since the death of Hashemi Rafsanjani, they pursued two lines of thought; the necessity of a cover candidate in case the Guardian Council disqualified Hassan Rouhani or in case of Rouhani’s hesitation to seek reelection. With registrations that clarified the line-up in the opposing front, Hassan Rouhani and his first vice president Eshaq Jahangiri signed up in the last hours of registration window.
A third side had also emerged on the sidelines. Ahmadinejad, who had claimed obedience of the Supreme Leader and promised not to have any electoral activity, not only threw support behind his former aide Hamid Baqaei, but also stunned the media when he took out his ID card and registered himself in the Interior Ministry building.
When the Guardian Council finished its vetting process, a premature death struck the Ahmadinejad alternative as he and his aide were both barred. Both mainstream camps were allowed three candidates. The moderate-reform coalition had the sitting president and vice president, plus a minor pro-Reform technocrat, Mostafa Hashemitaba. The opposite number included Ebrahim Raisi, Tehran mayor Qalibaf - rumored to be nominated as Raisi's vice president, and Mostafa Mirsalim, running on behalf of Islamic Coalition Party, a once-influential Principlist party with conservative roots.
As the campaigns hit full gear, it became clear that the Principlist camp would wield a double-edge sword, which lambasted the Rouhani administration over the economic issues including corruption, stagnation, and livelihood on the one hand and promised cash handouts and overnight housing and employment on the other.
Using their media empire, the Principlist candidates and their advocates increasingly radicalized their campaigns. The televised presidential debates turned into a ping-pong of accusations with the administration on the defensive over cases of corruption, occasionally with supposed evidence of the allegations brandished in front of Hassan Rouhani and Eshaq Jahangiri. Polarization, once feared to return with Ahmadinejad's candidacy, was fostered by conservatives, particularly Baqer Qalibaf and his tirade against ‘the corrupt 4 percent’, an imitation of the Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States. Rouhani's side of the race stood criticism until the last week, trying to avoid sentimentalism and adopt a coolheaded approach of accountability by providing statistics and figures.
Following the third and last televised debate, where he fired back at rivals over dividing the nation, abusing religious sentiments, and sabotaging the nuclear deal, Rouhani adopted a rhetoric many found to be genuinely pro-reform. In the meantime, rivals started a new line of attack on the administration, claiming that the hitherto unknown UNESCO 2030 initiative signed by the government was ‘promoting homosexuality’ and sex education for the under-age in Iranian schools.
The expected withdrawal of Qalibaf in favor of Raisi did not work as expected, mainly because Qalibaf Qalibaf's voter base was not essentially Principlist and overlapping with that of Raisi, as observers noted. After all, Tehran’s mayor was publicly known as a pragmatist executive. The Principlist coalition shot itself in the foot, when conservative cleric Ebrahim Raisi met with underground rapper Amirhossein Maghsoudlou aka Tataloo, in a bid to attract the social base of the popular singer and assure voters the Principlists will not limit social freedoms if victor in the election. Many saw this as stepping on the very ‘principles’ the camp boasted of defending.
On the balloting day, Principlists did their utmost by blaming the interior ministry of 'extensive infractions' in the election. The Guardian Council has received complaint, which it calls minors ones that will not result in a revocation. The clerical body is expected to endorse the election in two days.
Rouhani's 57 percent vote may not be enough for him push some of his major promises, and he will continued to be pressed by his proponents and opponents alike. However, Rouhani has signaled that he will show more respect for public demands in his second term as Iran's president. While the social media is expected to keep up the pressure, the Rouhani campaign's Telegram channel has announced it remains open as a tool for the public to communicate their demands to their president for the next four years.