"An avalanche is coming!"

As Iranians surge to the polls, a new generation of liberal reformers is expected to be swept into office. But it's not yet time to declare the mullahs powerless.

By Vivienne Walt

Feb 18, 2000 | As a 20-year-old firebrand, Hamidreza Jalai Pour sat in his jail cell in 1979, and listened to his fellow students chanting outside, as they waged their Islamic revolution on the streets. Since then, he has spent a second spell in jail -- this time at the hands of the same revolutionary government he fought to bring to power.

His three brothers were killed in Iran's long war with Iraq; his office was bombed by Iraqi forces. In the past 18 months alone, Jalai Pour, now editor of one of Iran's 35 daily newspapers, has had three of his publications shut by the police.

So, Jalai Pour speaks with the authority of someone who has seen more turbulent history than most. And rushing into his office on Friday afternoon, a few hours before the polls closed in Iran's parliamentary elections, he declared: "An avalanche is coming! This is really a new phenomenon."

The rocks from that avalanche have not yet hit the ground. With about 6,000 candidates, the results from the handwritten ballots stuffed into cardboard boxes on Friday could take nearly a week to tally. But Friday's elections for Iran's 290-seat parliament, or majlis, already seem likely to transform this country, with the hardcore conservatives losing their legislative majority to a dynamic new generation of liberal reformers.

Millions of Iranians converged on schools, mosques and even hotel lobbies to vote, in the freest elections the country has seen in decades. Throughout Friday, a Muslim holiday, the elections became a family outing, with generations walking to their neighboring voting station, tiny children in tow, and grandmothers in full black chador covering, treading shakily up stairs, resting on their grandchildren's arms.

Inside, the process was near chaos, with children helping their parents fill out the long ballot form, listing their pick among 400 candidates running for Tehran's 30 parliamentary seats. Friends sat on the floor, debating candidates and swapping the party candidate lists, which have been scattered on sidewalks, and passed through car windows, all week.

This has not been an election about candidates, however. Almost all those running are obscure figures, and since Iran's ruling mullahs, or clerics, permitted them just a one-week campaign, only a handful have emerged as recognizable leaders. Instead, two personalities have dominated this week's campaign -- and neither one is running: President Muhammad Khatami, and the far more conservative Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose authority is unimpeachable in Iran.

The painted election banners hanging throughout Tehran this week proclaim a range of bland election promises: job opportunities, security and freedom. And since most parties have adopted the same vague slogans, the main clue as to who represents what is whether Khatami's well-known portrait is painted alongside them. In reality, there is only one issue at stake: whether to loosen the rigid grip of Islamic law, as Khatami has attempted to do, against the ayatollah's will. Just one question pervades every discussion in Tehran's streets and restaurants, and in the city's sprawling bazaar: Whose side are you on?

"We are three generations, so we all think about different things," said Sara Asadi, 19, who stood in a pink nylon coat, next to her mother and grandmother, both dressed in black floor-length coats. "I've only heard about the revolution, while my mother and grandmother lived through it," she said. "Now, they are thinking about their social security, and I am thinking about how we are allowed to dress."

Does that mean her mother and grandmother will vote for the religious conservatives, I ask? At that moment, her mother shakes her head in furious denial, and whispers in my ear: "Khatami! Khatami!"

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