The call for a referendum on a new Iranian constitution seems on the face of it eminently reasonable. Given the Iranian hardliners obstructionism abundantly manifested in the disqualification by the Guardian Council of many reformist candidates in the 2004 parliamentary election how can anyone who desires change not support a call for the staging of a national referendum with the free participation of the Iranian people for the drafting of a new constitution?
Yet, since it was first publicised in October 2004, the results have been strange. The hardliners responded essentially by yawning and ignoring it altogether, leaving it to the reformists to do the ardent rejection. It has led to major disagreements within, as well as odd bedfellows among, various opponents of the Islamic regime. Some monarchists, republicans, and former and current leftists have been taken by the idea; others from the same groups and similar orientations have not.
Meanwhile, after an initial period of heated debate presumably one of the objectives of the referendums proponents the issue has essentially died inside Iran. It has been overtaken by the more immediate concern of how various political entities should position themselves in relation to the much-contested presidential election in June 2005.
Farideh Farhi is responding to Mohsen Sazegaras proposal for a referendum on a new Iranian constitution, Irans road to democracy
See also the articles by Afshin Molavi, Kaveh Ehsani, and Mansour Farhang in our Iran debate, Democracy & Iran
For an introduction to openDemocracys debate, see David Hayess Iran between revolution and democracy
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The trajectory of the call for a referendum, predictable in advance, is evidence for why it was not a good idea. While its stated purpose was to generate debate about the defects of the Islamic regime and the need for a new constitution, it also implied a criticism of efforts to bring about the gradual reform of the Islamic Republic. As such, it placed the reformists rather than the hardliners on the spot.
The situation was further complicated by the fact that individual signatories moved without coordination with groups working for change in Iran. In addition, by failing to address the mechanisms that would put pressure on the hardliners (popular mobilisation, negotiation among elites, institutional pressures and so on), the opponents of the Islamic regime once again drew attention to their lack of realism or, put more bluntly, their political impotence.
The problem in the Islamic Republic is not lack of desire for political change. Since 1995 two presidential elections, three parliamentary elections, and two municipal elections have revealed both the desire as well as the potential for change. More importantly, the Iranian electorate has already exerted its weight by making previously unimaginable election results a reality.
All this has been made possible by post-revolutionary trends. Iran has a highly educated population, which, thanks to post-revolutionary educational policies, cuts across gender lines. The country also has a contentious political structure which has prevented the emergence of a monolithic one-party system. Finally, the Iranian political system lacks a powerful external patron to whitewash its human-rights abuses and undemocratic ways in the name of regional security or the fight against terrorism.
These elements make the democratic struggle for gradual reform very real and its objectives realisable. But Irans other reality is that support for the status quo is also robust: it has a degree of social support and access to formidable political and institutional resources. The key to meaningful change in Iran is not to wish this reality away, but to engage with it in order to make the Iranian state more accountable, transparent, judicious, and respectful of human rights.
This can only be done through the hard yet steady work of building alternative resources, institutions, and pressure points: work that has already begun in Iran. It means, among other things, continuing to contest political sentences in the courts; to use international pressure to suspend laws that, for instance, allow for the execution of minors and death by stoning; to set up human-rights bodies to track the number and condition of political prisoners; participating in (admittedly flawed) elections to make sure that hardliners do not gain control of all levers of power; to begin in earnest the process of gaining independence and power for pressure groups such as the Iranian Medical Association, lawyer and journalist guilds, teacher and worker unions, even chambers of commerce.
The proponents of a referendum still hope for overnight change in Iran. But Iran of all places should have by now taught us that even revolutions are not sufficient to bring democracy and the end of authoritarian rule. Iran has already had its revolutions. In the mid-1990s the process of reforming the flawed results of the 1979 revolution began in earnest. There have been major setbacks and the pace of change has been slower than desired, but the Iran of 2005 is very different from the Iran of 1995.
I am convinced that, through the patient and persistent work of challenging the existing laws and political institutions, the Iran of 2015 will be a very different (and hopefully better) place as well.
