July 10, 2009
Request for Permits from a Corrupt Ministry?
Hossein Bastani
h.bastani(at)roozonline.com
Mir-Hossein Mousavi’s latest statement describing methods of continuing the protests to the June 12 presidential election stresses the necessity of respecting the law in engaging in protests and also the use of “creative and alternative methods” when the government has banned legal demonstrations.
This statement comes at a time when it seems the role of peaceful public protests in defense of their “right to vote” seem imperative. But the emphasis by reformers on respecting the law also makes the outcome of these protests even more complicated. This drive to act legally has resulted in some requests for permits for some gatherings, while government agencies continue to refrain from issuing any such permits.
This contradiction has so far resulted in three occasions when reformers had initially announced, through their limited websites, their decision to hold rallies but had to abandon the call shortly afterwards - despite the work done on them - because of the Ministry of Interior’s non-issuance of permits for them. In other words the protesters rejecting the announced election results had to mobilize their limited media resources to inform the public that the demonstrations had been cancelled.
It appears that the continuation of this state of affairs will have a strong negative impact on the public motivations that were born out of the June election. The cancellation means that when new calls for demonstrations are made, the public will not have the certainty that the gathering would be cancelled. In the long run, this would make the public less alert to such calls and would not make them take the reformists calls seriously. At the same time, the very notion of stressing on the necessity of getting a permit from Ahmadinejad Administration’s Ministry of Interior – which is itself the leading source of electoral fraud – could in the long run diminish the influence and authority of the reformist leaders in their calls for action.
So under these conditions when reformers are prevented from holding “legal” public protests and at the same time make calls for not engaging in “law breaking” activities, while they fully realize that in the absence of public protests, the electoral fraud will be soon archived by the public opinion, inside and outside Iran, what are the reformers supposed to do?
Before engaging in finding a solution to this dilemma, it must be pointed out that the effort to find a “legal” solution to the public’s protests is not because of optimism about the importance of the law for the administration, but for the purpose of upholding the principles that reformist candidates have announced to be on top of their agenda.
In a general viwe, it appears that the hands of reformists in holding “legal protests” are really not tied even within the current legal regime of the Islamic republic. One should remember that during the initial years of Mohammad Khatami’s presidency the pages of the country’s media were the scenes of hot debates by reformist jurists who argued that there was no need for a permit to hold public gatherings even according to the existing constitution. They referred to article 27 of the constitution that says, “Public gatherings and marches may be freely held, provided arms are not carried and that they are not detrimental to the fundamental principles of Islam” and concluded that since the materialization of other rights in the constitution did not require a permit from government agencies, the right of assembly too did not. So today too, by referencing the same legal arguments one could argue that holding non-armed public gatherings for the purpose of criticizing election rigging (a goal that protestors emphasize is not “detrimental to the fundamental principles of Islam”) are legal and thus engage in calling the public for such gatherings without wasting any social energy by waiting for a permit from the Ministry of Interior.
There is no doubt that government agencies will oppose such a move and issue warnings against them, calling them “illegal.” But protestors can insist on the legal interpretations presented by the reformist jurists and argue that obtaining a permit from the highest violator of the elections (i.e. the Ministry of Interior) is meaningless. In the face of different interpretations regarding the need (or not) for a permit, even if Ahmadinejad’s administration referred the issue to the Guardian Council, which is constitutionally tasked to interpret the laws, it would not enjoy any credibility. This is because the GC itself has been a party to the violations too by remaining silent in the face of the most serious violation of any election in the last three decades. One should note that reformist candidates did not accept the impartiality of the GC in its call to review their “complaints” and did not even send their representatives to the review committee. Similarly, they can reject the GC’s interpretation regarding the need to have a permit from the Ministry of Interior to hold public gatherings.
In his last statement on the ways to confront the electoral coup, Mousavi rightly stresses on the legal pursuit of the rigging that took place in the last election. This emphasis demonstrates his correct perspective of the long-term battle ahead of the pro-republicans in Iran. In any case, it appears that in addition to the above, one must make it clear that legal pursuit of the issue is not a substitute for public protests as far as their impact goes. In other words, public protests may be the only form of effective pressure that can in the long term weaken the perpetrators of electoral fraud and thus at the least increase the cost of such actions as a preventive measure for the future.
In fact, the difference between ending and not ending peaceful public protests is as important as accepting or rejecting the hold of the coup against republicanism in Iran. Should conservatists succeed – through any means, including using the issue of the need for a permit to hold peaceful marches – in depriving the reformist candidates from the support of protesting masses, the process of finalizing the coup regime shall be so fast that in a matter of just one or two months the only issue that will be remembered regarding the June 12 election in the public sphere will be the letters sent by the families of prisoners, and the statements of activists whose demands will be limited to more humane treatment of the prisoners. Then, Ahmadinejad’s administration will establish this notion inside the regime that not only is any level of electoral fraud possible in Iran, but even the subsequent protests are fully controllable, until further notice.
The materialization of the above scenario will discourage people from pursuing their right to vote through peaceful gatherings, and as a direct consequence people will be driven towards more radical methods which Mousavi has warned about in his recent statement.