It’s What They Call, The Rise and Fall

19 May 2014 | 21:42 Code : 1933048 Home Who’s Who in Iranian Politics General category
The political life of Gholam-Hossein Karbaschi, Tehran’s trailblazer mayor.
It’s What They Call, The Rise and Fall

IRD- In Tehran, walls have received political slogans with generosity during the past thirty-five years. In the early post-Revolution years, they hosted fierce competitions between slogans sprayed by pro-regime Islamists and their Marxist and liberal rivals, out of which the loyalists emerged with absolute victory. During the eight-year war with Iraq, the walls were painted with slogans that wished for the death of Saddam Hussein and victory of the ‘Army of Islam’. Slogans for and against the Green Movement were the latest political battle that took the walls of Tehran as their stage of performance. Within these large-scale battles, there was one man who received his own small space on the walls for a short time: Gholam-Hossein Karbaschi, the former mayor of Tehran. In the autumn of 1997, a mini-battle happened with the help of streets and sprays, either to condemn this young technocrat for his plundering of beit-ol-mal (public money), or to praise him as a second Amir Kabir – the legendary modernist chancellor of the Qajar Era.

Collar close-fit, yet beard trimmed. Typically technocratic.

Pro-Karbaschi zealots might have now reconsidered their lavish praise of him. By and large, he has been absent from Iranian politics, at least on the front stage; and if there was anyone who deserved bearing the title of Amir Kabir of the age, it would be Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Karbaschi’s patron, for all his efforts to reconstruct Iran after the devastating war with Iraq. Nonetheless, few anti-Karbaschi people might have reevaluated their image of him. For them, more than anything else, Karbaschi is a symbol of the deviation from the revolutionary ideals that happened during Rafsanjani’s liberalization of Iranian economy and culture.

From his position as the governor of Isfahan province during the 1980s, Karbaschi came to Tehran to administer a city whose disproportionate expansion since the 1970s had caused enormous problems, triggering debates about changing the capital. Tehran faced a big facelift during Karbaschi’s mayoralty, both good and bad. Highways crisscrossed the city, and high-rise buildings were erected, sometimes notoriously in narrow alleys. The city’s public transportation was renovated and new parks were opened around the city. He established farhangsaras –‘cultural houses’- around the city –to the consternation of conservatives who viewed them as rivals to mosques, and published Hamshahri (Fellow Citizen), a full colored newspaper that shaped and was shaped by the taste of the emerging middle class. Conservatives and unyielding revolutionaries frowned at these changes which they regarded as part of a plan to westernize the country. The mayor’s lavish spendings, a reflection of the general management trend of Rafsanjani’s era, was also the target of their attacks.

A regular appearance on the front page of satire weekly Gol Agha. He was criticized for his expensive development plans.

Karbaschi’s political hyperaction also fostered grudge. Along with several members of Rafsanjani’s cabinet he founded Kargozaran-e Sazandegi (Executives of Construction), one month before the fifth parliament elections. The clique aimed to compete against the conservatives who were distancing themselves from Akbar Rafsanjani and preparing to take hold of the presidential post after the end of his second term. Against pressures, Kargozaran managed to form a powerful minority in the parliament, although Karbaschi failed to send into the Majles his deputies who had showered Tehran with their banners and fliers.

Despite their initial hesitations, the Executives threw their weight behind Mohammad Khatami in 1997 presidential elections and came out as the victor side. However, Karbaschi and his colleagues paid a price for this. Attacks on Karbaschi and Tehran’s municipality snowballed a few months after Khatami’s election and reached their apex in the second year of Khatami’s presidency. Several district mayors of Tehran were arrested on charges of corruption, released a few months later to relate their stories of tortured confessions. Karbaschi himself was arrested in April 1998, although released shortly after Khatami’s plea to the Supreme Leader. Jame’eh, the leading reformist newspaper of the time printed a cartoon, showing Karbaschi’s mug shot in prison, with a placard that read ‘76.2.2’ - the day Mohammad Khatami was elected as Iran’s president. Karbaschi’s detention raised protest from a diverse range of people, fellow technocrats in Hashemi’s administration to well-known artists who had been generously patronized by the municipality during his mayoralty. His trial, starting two month later and broadcast by the state-run TV, turned into a public sensation. The final verdict was not in favor of Karbaschi however: he had to spend three years in jail and was banned from serving in public institutes for ten years. Nonetheless, he was released before the end of his term, reportedly after being encouraged by Hashemi Rafsanjani to call for clemency from the Supreme Leader.

Tried by the Conservative court. He thought that he deserved praise, not prison, for his service.

After his release, in the vibrant atmosphere of the early Reform era and the spring of Iranian press, Karbaschi published Ham-Mihan (Compatriot) daily, a reminder of Hamshahri, his brainchild. Ham-Mihan was the voice of the Executives on the threshold of the sixth parliamentary election. But in Tehran, the sixth parliamentary election was all about Mosharekat -the progressive Reformist party led by Mohammad Khatami’s brother- and little chance remained for other candidates. Mosharekat concentrated its attacks on Hashemi Rafsanjani, to the point that the ayatollah resigned from his seat in the sixth parliament under allegations of vote rigging. Rafsanjani’s once popular daughter Faezeh, a vocal champion of women’s right also found no place inside the winning team. Karbaschi’s newspaper was shut down along with all but few of other Reformist newspapers in the spring of 2000 after Ayatollah Khamenei strongly criticized them for having turned into “bases for the enemy”. Karbaschi took a leave from politics afterwards, and even his nostalgic credit could not help his party gain seats in in the second city council elections. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the next influential mayor of Tehran, was in many ways an antithesis to Karbaschi with his humble roots, modest style of dressing, and revolutionary, quick-action, anti-bureacracy style of management.

Beards shorter, hair more fashionable. A skeptic Karbaschi in the late 2000s.

The former mayor returned to the spotlight in the spring of 2009. Although Kargozaran had decided to support Mir Hossein Mousavi, Karbaschi decided to be a maverick and support another Reformist candidate, Mehdi Karroubi. Despite the self-deprecating claim that he was “ready to polish Karroubi’s shoes” Karbaschi was appointed as head of Karroubi’s electoral campaign and his would-be vice president. He raised controversy during the election after he shed a tear or two in Karroubi’s teaser movie when speak of Iranians’ adverse economic situation. Principalists mocked his tears, seeing that it came from a man who hardly spoke from a pro-justice platform. The lively electoral mood of 2009 campaigns quickly turned violent after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was announced as the winner, but Karbaschi preferred to keep silent, knowing that one wrong move would send him behind the bars just as many of his fellow Reformist friends. His silence, however, did not bring him immunity from attacks. One popular rumor circulated by the Principlists in order to refute claims of electoral fraud was that even Karbaschi had not voted for Karroubi and has cast his vote openly for Mir Hossein Mousavi. Karbaschi responded to this rumor only when it was repeated by the influential Principlist MP Mohammad-Reza Bahonar. His sharp-tongued open letter to Bahonar ended with a reminder of the story of Ashoura, just to remind him ‘you would not dare come close to us, had it not been for our tied hands.’

 

By: Ali Attaran

tags: karbaschi