Word: reformist
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Ever since reformist President Mohammed Khatami's upset election with a nearly 70% vote three years ago, Iran has been on a pretty wild ride. It may be about to get a bit wilder if the little brother gets his way. Reza, 40, 16 years younger than the President, is leading the reform ticket in this week's elections, and by most accounts the reformers are set to take control of the assembly from Islamic conservatives...
Once certified, the candidates criss-crossed voting districts, addressing students, factory workers, mosquegoers. Helicopters leafleted spectators at a parade marking the revolution's 21st anniversary. Though the President must stand above party politics, his brother was free to work hard in the trenches, forming a reformist party called the Participation Front. "What we are seeing is less ideology and more politics," says Hadi Semati, a Tehran University professor. "The republican part of the Islamic Republic is getting stronger...
...that's a prospect that has the country's conservative political clergy understandably nervous. Last time voters were presented with such an opportunity, the conservatives allied with the country's supreme spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, suffered a humiliating defeat, as 70 percent of the voters chose the reformist Mohammed Khatami over the candidate endorsed by Khameini. This time, even though the conservatives managed to axe more than 1,000 liberal candidates before the election, the margin of their defeat may be even higher...
...female students at Tehran's university grew from 25 percent in 1979 to 55 percent today. Whereas the primacy of the clergy had been an established principle in Iranian village life, the urban youth who now make up a growing plurality of the population tend to vote overwhelmingly for reformist candidates. Likewise women voters, as Khatami proved in the 1998 presidential election...
...While his background includes both solid security credentials and an association with Russia?s reformist politicians, it?s clear that the former played the major role in bringing Putin to power - and therein lies a harsh message for the West. Yeltsin had established a working relationship with Washington based on copious infusions of Western cash to shore up his deeply unpopular regime in exchange for Russian compliance with the U.S. agenda on the international stage and lip-service to Western ideas on how the Russian economy should be reformed. But the systematic international humiliation that Yeltsin?s approach brought...