City Councils: A Table of Corruption or a City Parliament?

Less than a month after the celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the 1979 Revolution, on March 7, 1998, the first round of city and village council elections was held in Iran, with 24 million people participating. At that time, Abdolvahed Mousavi Lari was the Minister of Interior, and Mohammad Khatami was the President of the government that called itself the reformist government, one of the most important reforms he aimed to implement was the execution of Article 100 of the Constitution and the promise to start the councils, which had not been realized since the victory of the revolution. The winners of this election were the reformists; the first council began its work with familiar figures such as Saeed Hajarian, Jamileh Kadivar, Abdollah Nouri, Mohammad Gharazi, and Ebrahim Asgarzadeh. Twenty years after the victory of the revolution, the councils finally began to operate. Since then, four rounds of council elections have been held, with changes in the conduct of elections, including their merger with presidential elections. Many representatives have come to and left the councils, plans and programs have been published and not implemented, and today, on the brink of a new round of city and village council elections, social observers say they are faced with an institution that has taken on more of a political and economic color than a popular and urban character. But what exactly are councils in Iran? When we talk about councils, what are we referring to? Reza Alijani, a national-religious political activist, states: 'No comprehensive research has been conducted on the experience of councils to reach a general and final judgment. Because in the performance of councils, both positive functions have been recorded, especially in smaller cities, and weak functions filled with corruption, to the extent that in some medium-sized cities, we have seen all council members being arrested by judicial forces. Of course, we should not forget that the experience of councils after Mr. Khatami's era has been for eight years in a period where the political atmosphere has been closed, and the press and media have not had the freedom to monitor the behavior of the executors, and there is always an inverse relationship between press freedom and the increase of corruption. That is, the less freedom there is, the more corruption there is. Therefore, we must be able to experience this in a better condition. We should also not forget that the council institution, apart from the issue of corruption that exists in some councils, is fundamentally a positive thing. Although the councils that were discussed at the time of the revolution were proposed by Ayatollah Taleghani at all levels of political and economic decision-making in the country. Now, according to some experts, even in the urban area, there are 17 institutions involved in decision-making, from the Ministry of Roads and Communications to the police, environmental protection, and others, with the municipality being one of these 17 institutions, albeit one of the most important ones. The city council is the board of directors of the municipality, but the idea that the municipality should be managed by one person, namely the mayor, and that it should be under a board that supervises both its budget and its behavior seems to be a more positive and progressive matter. Furthermore, the council institution can be a platform for experience for those who enter executive areas. The essence of councils is that people can be self-governing in urban affairs, apart from the experience they gain, which can especially happen in council assistance. The council institution is a field of collective participation.' Chapter seven of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, from Articles 100 to 106, is entirely about councils. Some say this law has not left much room for councils, and the council and urban management in Iran are powerless and weak. Nasser Karami, a journalist, states: 'What we have under the title of city councils and urban management in Iran has no proportion or relation to this concept in the world. In the world, urban management means those who naturally manage the city's vision. Various elements shape a vision in the urban environment. Well, part of that is, for example, the economy, part is politics, part is culture, education, leisure, legal issues, and most importantly, security. This collection shapes the city's vision. Urban management is someone who has the power to change and improve the ability to create interaction between these elements. These are divided into 26 sections. One of them is urban services: waste collection, traffic organization, and construction organization. In Iran, when we say city council or mayor or urban management, we only mean urban services. The other 25 are not included. In urban services, it cannot be said that they have extensive authority, even in that one twenty-sixth. Because even there, for example, the issue of air pollution is largely under the control of the Ministry of Energy, the Ministry of Oil, the Ministry of Industries, which again has no relation to the municipality. In the area of traffic organization, well, traffic management is largely under the control of traffic police, which again has no relation to the municipality.' With this in mind, there are citizens who ask why they should participate in council elections and what effect this vote will have on their urban lives. Those who follow the news in newspapers speak of economic corruption in an institution that was supposed to be a city parliament. Only in December 2016, thirty-seven members of councils and urban management officials in Iran were arrested. Council members in several cities now even have legal cases. From Klasar in Amol to Abik. According to the Director General of the Islamic City and Village Councils Office in the Ministry of Interior, in a conversation dated March 29, 2017, with the newspaper Shargh, in some counties where their council has been dissolved, four out of seven council members have had financial issues! In the last weeks of 2015, the financial case of the Tabriz City Council was the most serious case raised regarding councils. Five people were arrested, and ultimately, it did not lead to the dissolution of the council. Nevertheless, Hossein Ghazian, a sociologist, still considers participation in council elections, voting consciously, and monitoring the performance of representatives as a way to change conditions: 'Imagine someone in Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad voting for a president has no direct and close relationship with the president, but a representative of a small city council or village is the same person who lived in our neighborhood and we knew his living conditions, we realize that his situation is getting better and we might attribute this to the corruption that exists in councils and things like that. Therefore, we have a more objective understanding and assessment of councils, and this may lead to more disappointment. However, overall, we still have to stand by things like councils. Because for the society to improve, it progresses bit by bit. It is not that suddenly a very excellent council or a very excellent government falls from the sky into the people's lap and then they go enjoy it. This is not the case at all. Bit by bit, these things are built, destroyed, we become disappointed, and then we rebuild, we make our decisions better, and we move forward. Moreover, even if we say it is not useful to us and we do not go, no better event will happen for us because decisions are made about public issues, including in councils at the level of our neighborhood, our city, our village, or anywhere else, and of course at the public level, and whether we like it or not, these decisions will be made. What we do by sending representatives to councils is that we may influence decision-making a bit and include our interests in public decision-making. In our absence, these decisions will be made without us being able to advance our interests at all, but here we are given the opportunity to advance our interests a bit, and I emphasize advancing interests a little because it is not supposed that with one vote we create a paradise. Furthermore, we must know what the cost of this work is. The initial cost of this work is voting. If we want more, we should look at who we are voting for and choose correctly, and if we want even more, we should see how the person we voted for is performing their job and demand part of our civic responsibility, which is to monitor those to whom we have entrusted our voting rights, to do their job correctly, and if we perform these initial civic responsibilities, then we may think that this vote really helps us in some areas.' Mr. Ghazian raises the question of whether those who go to councils are not among the citizens themselves, speaking of a more widespread corruption in Iranian society: 'These people who are supposed to rise from the community to go to the council are no one but you and me and others. And if there is relatively widespread corruption in our society and we are all sometimes inevitably involved in corruption, from a so-called bribe we give to a traffic officer to let us pass in a traffic plan to the favoritism we do with our local baker to get our bread faster. These are all examples of corruption, and we are immersed in it and do not realize it, and we are also contributing to corruption and relationships of corruption. Well, the people who go to the city council do not come from the sky. They do not come from Mars to go to the council. They come from this society with the same ethics and the same spirits, this is one point. The other point is that councils themselves are a source for distributing resources, for distributing facilities, opportunities, economic resources, and the like. The problem is that there is not enough oversight over the work of councils, not only for personal and cultural reasons, and we as voters do not monitor, but those structures or channels of oversight do not exist either. For example, the status of councils is not transparent. Their negotiations are not recorded and made known to the public. It is unclear what the deterrent regulations against corruption in councils are? Can someone in councils use the facilities available in the councils? Or can they set up a company that takes the place of the municipality? Can they hire people? Well, this conflict of interest has not been defined in a way that prevents it. Therefore, there is a valuable source for distributing benefits there, but there are no deterrents against corruption. There is no transparency, and we do not monitor. All of these, along with the cultural reasons stemming from our own ethics and behaviors, come together and create a situation for an institution that could have helped improve society, which makes everyone worried or hopeless about it.' However, the competitions of the fifth round of council elections may be somewhat different. In this round of council competitions, not only political figures have volunteered to enter the council. Among them in Tehran are Leila Arshad, the founder of a non-governmental organization to help women and children in distress, as well as some journalists and reporters in the field of city and council, and even a figure like Taraneh Yalda, a PhD graduate in architecture and urban planning from the Polytechnic University of Turin and Paris 8 University. Can newer figures who seem to be non-political and dress more like people on the street solve the problems of councils? Nasser Karami, a journalist, states: 'Not at all, for example, if we now place a prominent sociologist from the University of Tehran there, what will they do? Do they have legal authority there to do something in terms of social issues for the citizens of Tehran? Let's say we send a prominent lawyer to the city council, or we send a prominent politician there. What will they do? What authority do they have there? The discussion is that we must put the legal powers and the law of councils in front of us and say, well, yes, they have these powers, these capabilities, they can do these things. Such a thing does not exist. I think that the fact that their qualifications have been approved, they know that after all, if you send a prominent sociologist to the council, they cannot do anything, what will they do? Councils in Iran are just the board of directors of the municipality, that's it. Now, that we come to consider this as a significant political advantage for the people, that we allowed someone who has been a political prisoner and is considered an independent person to go to the city council. But I do not think this permission can have a significant positive impact on people, and I do not look at the issue very optimistically.' Maryam Sokhaki, a former reporter for the Tehran City Council, talks about figures who performed better and were more active during the council experience but became disappointed: 'In general, I have a positive view that different people come to experience the council. They must have had a study that led them to nominate themselves for councils. This is generally positive. That various groups, especially women, who have worked in social fields, social harm, and women's issues, are coming forward is a good and positive event. That is, there are people who have had a positive activity in society, and now they want to test themselves in a council position. Some of them have been active in NGOs and have been successful, some have been journalists who have been successful in their field. Now they want to experience the council, but I have a slightly negative view about whether they can be successful in the council or not.' She talks about the problems that newcomers to the council face.