Iran hardliners set for poll win
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A veiled Iranian girl holds a campaign poster of Mohammad Reza Abbasi Fard in Tehran.
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Nearly half of the Iranian parliament is critical of general elections proceeding despite the belief that they will not be free or fair.
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TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- Iranians are preparing to go to the polls amid predictions that conservative hardliners will flex their muscles and take control of the Islamic nation's parliament.
Friday's election, which comes in the wake of a train explosion that claimed hundreds of lives, is poised to be one of the biggest upsets in Iranian politics since reformists promising radical change were swept into office seven years ago.
Four years ago in Iran, walls were plastered with pictures and campaign posters as the parliamentary elections of 2000 captivated a country that believed it was cementing a solid agenda of reform. Reformist candidates swept to power.
Now the walls are almost bare, the main reform party is promising to boycott the elections and voter turnout is expected to be low, especially among Iran's disillusioned youth, many of whom are unemployed.
Observers say hopes embodied by President Mohammed Khatami's 1997 landslide failed to materialize and his efforts to free up the country's restrictive political and social agenda were rebuffed by hardline conservative clergymen, who retained the real power.
Last month the Guardian Council, which holds a blanket political veto, sparked Iran's most serious political crisis since the 1979 Islamic revolution by barring 4,000 reformist parliamentary candidates, including the president's own brother and 80 present MPs.
The reformists accused the hardliners of staging a parliamentary coup, and criticized the country's supreme leader for allowing the elections to go ahead despite the widespread belief that they will not be free or fair.
"Is not your insistence on holding the elections as scheduled anything but putting your seal of approval on the illegal actions of the Guardian Council?" they asked supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a six-page open letter.
In the letter, read at a gathering of the protesting members of parliament this week, the reformists said they were deeply concerned about the future of the country.
"A parliament elected in a sham election will not be able to defend the rights of the people or the security of the country," the letter said.
However, these accusations are rebutted by one group of hardliners running in Friday's election, the Coalition of Developers of Islamic Iran.
Accusations of poor human rights, they said, were the creation of the enemies of Iran; criticism of the election process by the European Parliament an ugly domineering interference in Iran's internal affairs.
But some analysts and intellectuals though have started to openly complain that Iran is becoming a religious dictatorship ... little different from the monarchy they deposed 25 years ago.
Efforts by President Khatami to reform Iranian society have failed.
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Many are openly criticizing Khamenei but are also disillusioned with Khatami's failures, calling on him to act on his frequent promises to resign.
However, CNN's Chief International Correspondent Christiane Amanpour said it was notable that these criticisms are being voiced in public and certain social restrictions, such as on women's clothing, have been relaxed in recent years.
But these small but hard-won liberties are now under threat. The Coalition of Developers, for example, says a ban on the use of satellite television, a popular pastime in Iran, must be enforced to guard against corruption of Islamic values and national security.
Amanpour added that conservatives, looking to regain full political control, are now reported to be positioning a cleric, Hassan Rowhani, to win presidential elections scheduled for next year.
Rowhani was Iran's pointman for crucial nuclear negotiations with the West last autumn. The resulting agreement for intrusive inspections was widely hailed, but even that may develop into a new crisis as the United States and Europe accuse Iran of violating its end of the bargain. A new report from the United Nations' nuclear watchdog body is due around this weekend.
-- CNN Correspondents Christiane Amanpour, Kasra Naji and Matthew Chance contributed to this report
