Will a new charismatic leader from within the ruling elite co-opt the reformist movement and institutionalize it?
Hajjarian, considered the theoretician behind Iran's reformist movement, was extremely influential until a 2000 assassination attempt that left him severely disabled.
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Khatami overwhelmingly won the presidency in 1997, raising hopes the reformist movement would bring religious and democratic freedoms to the Islamic republic.
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He says Mr Khatami could not remain silent - the reformist movement that looks to him for leadership is incensed by the case.
There is already an evident discrepancy between the deep-rooted demands of the movement that this election has unleashed and what Moussavi or the entire reformist movement can actually deliver.
However, one point must be made clear: The reformist movement represents a bigger and greater social phenomenon than the electoral campaign of opposition candidate Mir Hossein Moussavi and like-minded moderate conservative clerics.
If such reforms initiate a reformist movement within the communist party (this is not certain at all), parties could become part of a roundtable that might eventually negotiate a transition to democracy in the same way that it happened in countries such as Hungary.
His death is "a terrible blow for the (reformist) green movement and everybody who has been active these past few months, " said Mehrdad Khonsari, a senior research consultant at the Centre for Arab and Iranian Studies in London.
The main reformist parties and the opposition Green Movement have called for a boycott of the vote, saying the election process isn't democratic.
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His chief rival, reformist Mir Hossein Moussavi, became a leader of the opposition Green Movement along with Mehdi Karrubi.
Soon after the election of President Khatami, in summer 1999, a major student uprising led to yet another massive movement against the government, at a time, in fact, that an exceedingly popular reformist president was leading the country.
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