Azerbaijan, Baku, May 5 / Trend , D.Ibrahimova/
The presidential elections in Iran will be held on June 12, 2009. The reformist camp has nominated two candidatures for presidential post - former parliament speaker Mehdi Karroubi and former Prime Minister Mousavi Mirhuseyn.
The conservative camp has nominated the candidature of ex-commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Mohsen Rezai. But the incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad does not hurry to nominate his candidature, although the election campaign in his support has already begun
All candidates, regardless of their reform or conservative direction, promise to change politics in the country. They promise different policy from Ahmadinejad's policy, who hedged Iran from the world, bringing the country to the serious economic and political isolation.
Reforms, changes are very much like slogans of the newly elected president of the United States Barack Obama. He, like his possible Iranian colleagues, promised changes in the economy and in foreign policy. In particular, with regard to Iran Obama has promised to abolish the "preconditions" and sit at the negotiating table.
The United States has knowingly voted for a change, but as far as feasible Iran's reforms today and how Iran is able to take the conservative-reformist candidate? The main levers of power in Iran belongs to Iranian spiritual leader Ali Khamenei, and to some extent, the President is the executor of his will.
Candidates for presidential post are also approved by the Council Guards, which is controlled by the spiritual leader. Needless to say, candidates for the presidency are thinking too progressive. According to Khamenei, the a priori will not be approved by this Council. If a candidate is approved, it means that he does not intend to radically change the policy of the country. Progressiveness is inconsistent with the general course of policy, elected for another 30 years ago. One excludes the other, and reformism in Iran is obtained as a result of "very moderate" and even somewhere resembling conservatism.
Reformism in Iranian does not involve serious reform, ironically. The situation will improve as mush as the spiritual leader desires, because the power in Iran is an organized and turned system, which could well do without the president. And hardly any candidate at this stage will be able to resist "the machine of Iranian government."
So does it need to change power in Iran as a result? Theoretically it needs, especially in the country where one fifth of the population lives under poverty. But on the other hand, people already have a habit of a bitter experience, which showed that whoever was "at the helm", the positive changes do not occur. The Iranians should firstly think that there would be no worse, and to talk about the positive dynamics probably does not happen.
With regards to the situation of Iran outside the country, and in particular its relations with the western countries, it would be wiser to give preference to eccentric, but the proven leader Ahmadinejad.
In his remarks, he was not always restrained and likes to make contradictory behavior with an interval of several days, but at the same time, Ahmadinejad has become predictable in his unpredictability. Western countries are not so badly as before, react to his actions and utterances. Neither his uncomplimentary remarks against Israel, nor the endless achievements in the way of conquering universe, and the process of obtaining nuclear fuel cause a nervous reaction of the West, but are accepted with the quiet humility.
And if to accept the style of Ahmadinejad, those innovations that will be brought by his "reformist" competitors to the economic and political life of the country remain under a big question. So why to change a proven "old friend" to the new, from whom you do not know what to wait? Reasonable would be to rely on such a familiar and habitual President, tested over four years of governance, with all his imperfections and strangeness, but not on a new candidate, whose unrealized reformism eventually can lead to anything.
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