Tehran - Former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami will lead the reformist opposition coalition in parliamentary elections scheduled for March 14 next year, a coalition spokesman said Friday. "Khatami has a key role for preparing the reformist coalition in the elections," Abdollah Nasseri, spokesman of the Reformist Coalition Headquarters (RCH), told reporters in Tehran.
The RCH is a coalition of the main reformist and moderate groups in Iran, including the Islamic Iran Participation Front, the Organization of Mujaheddin of the Islamic Revolution and Kargozaran (Civil Servants), the latter faction led by ex-president Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani.
The only main reformist group missing in the coalition is Etemad Melli (National Trust), led by former parliamentary speaker Mehdi Karroubi, who rejected joining the Khatami group although ideologically following the same line.
The parliament is dominated by the ultra-conservative Abadgaran (Development Builders) party which is close to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and also currently trying to form a coalition with conservative factions.
A victory in the parliamentary elections would not only be a comeback for the reformists but also prepare the ground for pushing Ahmadinejad out of office in the 2009 presidential elections.
"We have still not lost hope to realise the main aim, which is Mr Khatami's presidency in 2009," said Nasseri.
The spokesman termed the Ahmadinejad government "the most unstable in Iranian (post-revolution) history," and said that the RCH would remove the current extremism from political discourse, improve Iran's grave economic problems and also restore its international image following the dispute with the West over its nuclear programme, regional policies and denying the Holocaust.
"The situation in the country is so critical that all factions should attend the elections for changing the status quo," Nasseri said.
According to press speculation, the RCH list of 30 seats for the capital Tehran, politically the main constituency, would be headed by former chief nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani and also include former ministers of Khatami's cabinet.
Both Khatami and Rowhani have harshly criticized Ahmadinejad for pushing Iran towards international isolation with his uncompromising policies.
Ahmadinejad's opponents accuse him of favouring ideology over expertise and consider this as the main reason why eight of his cabinet members have resigned, including the oil minister, head of the planning and budget organization, central bank governor and chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani.
According to economic experts Ahmadinejad has failed to implement his economic reforms in favour of low-income social classes and is held responsible for high inflation and astronomic real estate prices.
