"Tajzadeh's crime isn't clear to the people," cried a student leader to a roar of applause. "Is it because he stood against the guardians of power? Because he safeguarded people's vote? He's the new hero of democracy in Iran!"
Tajzadeh became a hero of the reform movement when as supervisor of the parliamentary elections he defended the reformist victory, which the country's hardline Guardian Council threatened to annul. This week's sentence bars Tajzadeh from monitoring elections — most significantly the June presidential race — for the next six years. The decision is seen as a stepped-up campaign to discourage moderate President Mohammed Khatami from running for reelection, rather than as a move to facilitate rigging the June vote itself. Flustered by the hardline backlash, the cautious Khatami may decline to run if the election turns into a confrontation with hardliners. "The President, personally, is the target of these pressures," his brother, Mohammed Reza Khatami, told the students. "He is (their) major obstacle, which all these efforts are aimed at removing."
Though they waited for nearly two hours, portraits in hand, the students were disappointed when Tajzadeh didn't show up. Mohammed Reza Khatami attempted to pacify them. "Others will fill his place," he said. "One cannot lose hope over one person's defeat. All this is happening to push us to announce the funeral of reform."
Despite the soothing rhetoric, many students feel that the President underestimates their frustration. "After all these years, we're not prepared to take a step backwards," said Maryam Gholabi, 21, a medical student. More revealing than any of the student speeches or placards was the absence of photos of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the late Ayatollah Khomeini, whose pictures adorn every public space in Iran. That day at Tehran University, the pillar on which Khamenei's photo normally hangs was bare.