A Moderate On Trial

THE Iranian establishment heaved a sigh of relief on April 13 when a powerful students organisation called off a rally which had been credited with immense destabilising potential. The provocation for the threat was the arrest of Tehran's mayor Ghulamhussein Karbaschi, sparking off probably the biggest crisis in the Islamic Republic's almost 20-year history which has left the country sharply divided. Notes political commentator Darioush Sajjadi: "It's alarming because a controversy surfaced even among the top officials of the system."

바카라 웹사이트Karbaschi was arrested on April 4 on charges of fraud and embezzlement, a move considered by President Seyed Mohammad Khatami-led moderates to be a blow to their reformist plans. The 47-year-old mayor says the fraud charges are part of the 'political campaign' launched by his 'rightist opponents'. Says a moderate member of Parliament, Faezeh Hashemi, daughter of former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani: "It's a blow to democracy and political and cultural reforms in Iran. This is an act of revenge by the faction which lost in the presidential election." The Khatami cabinet met on the day of the arrest and voiced unanimous protest.

Karbaschi campaigned with relentless zeal for Khatami in last summer's presidential election, in which he overwhelmingly defeated the rightist candidate, Ali Akbar Nateq-Nouri, now Parliament Speaker. And since the head of the judiciary, Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, is believed to be close to Nateq-Nouri, the legal proceedings have been given a political colour. For their part, judicial officials deny that the proceedings against the mayor are "politically motivated" and argue that they are part of a campaign against "ill-gotten money". "The probe carried out by the court is free of political concerns," said Mohseni Ejeli, head of a special court for trying public servants. Rightist lawmakers and journalists agree, saying that Karbaschi's impressive achievements during his nine years at the helm of the sprawling municipality are no reason to waive the charges against him.

The hardliners have focused their attack on the mayor over the last year. Karbaschi seemed equal to the task when he defended himself in his newspaper, Hamshahri, winning support from moderate leaders and especially former president Rafsanjani, who now heads the powerful Expediency Council. Since stepping down as president, Rafsanjani remains an influential figure as a top advisor to Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei.

Karbaschi angered the right wing when he formed a political faction called Servants of Reconstruction, also known as Group-6 or G-6. Most of the technocrats and executives in Khatami's government are allied with the G-6, including government spokesman and minister of culture Seyed Ataollah Mohajerani and interior minister Abdullah Nouri.

A former cleric, Karbaschi began his education at a Quranic school in the holy city of Qom and Isfahan in the late 1970s. As a young man he fought against the regime of the pro-West Shah who was toppled in the 1979 revolution, and spent some time in jail. He attracted attention when he was appointed governor of Isfahan. In 1989, Rafsanjani, labelled by the foreign media as a pragmatic, brought Karbaschi to Tehran, where as mayor, he gave the city a face-lift and built sports grounds, libraries and art galleries. These efforts won him the title "modern day Robin Hood" as he allocated taxes levied from the rich on social work.

Meanwhile, a political standoff continues, with the interior ministry, which appoints the mayor of the Iranian capital, complaining that it had not been informed of his arrest. And in an unusual move, the crisis was discussed by Khamenei when he sent for Rafsanjani and the heads of all three government branches—Khatami, Nateq-Nouri and Yazdi—and ordered them to urgently find a solution to the problem.

The officials met once of their own accord and then for a second time on April 12 in the presence of Khamenei. Although no information was available about the talks, the Persian daily Karo-Kargar reported that some sort of settlement was underway. It added that Khamenei's intervention was likely to speed up the mayor's release.

Simultaneously, students called for a protest rally on April 13 in front of Tehran University, a spot that has witnessed much revolutionary activity before and after the revolution. But while tensions may have been defused for now, it is still not clear whether the moderates' programme will be diluted. Most analysts remain optimistic and say that reforms will continue, no matter who is at the helm of affairs.