Leading Iran reformers barred from polls

Leading Iran reformers barred from polls
AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE

JANUARY 10: Jailed former interior minister Abdollah Nuri and a host of other Iranian reformers, including sitting MPs, have been barred from standing for key parliamentary elections next month, newspapers and the Opposition said on Monday. The candidates received letters from provincial governors on Monday morning notifying them of their disqualification, said the leader of a banned but tolerated Opposition movement who was among those barred from the February 18 polls.

Iran Freedom Movement leader Ebrahim Yazdi said both he and Nuri intended to lodge appeals against their disqualification ``within 24 hours'', as required by Iran's electoral law. The decision by the Council of Guardians, a conservative-dominated body charged with vetting election candidates for their commitment to the principles of the 1979 Islamic revolution, is a serious blow to reformers' hopes of ending their conservative opponents' stranglehold over parliament. Apart from Nuri, who was the reformers' top vote-getter in their sweepingvictory in Iran's first ever municipal elections last February, the Guardians also barred the head of the reformers' joint campaign headquarters, Behzad Nabavi, newspapers said.

A full 30 reformist MPs who sit in the current conservative-controlled legislature also saw their candidacies for the next parliament rejected, the newspapers said. Two directors of leading reformist dailies banned by the conservative courts last year, Abbas Abdi of the Salam newspaper and Hamdi Reza Jalaipur of Neshat, were also disqualified by the Guardians. As in past elections, the Guardians barred all candidates of the liberal Islamist IFM, including Yazdi, as well as candidates put up by another tolerated Opposition movement, the nationalist National Front a total of around 15 Opposition candidates in all. The disqualification of so many of their leading candidates confirms the reformers' worst fears.

Mindful of the Guardians' past wholesale rejection of pro-reform candidates without explanation, 32 leading reformers wroteto moderate President Mohammad Khatami last week warning against any arbitrary barring of their candidates. The reformers urged Khatami to ensure a ``healthy and transparent'' atmosphere for the elections, in which they hope to end their conservative opponents' legislative stranglehold over the President's reforms. But it earned the reformers a stern rebuke from Iran's Supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday.

The final list of candidates deemed eligible for the elections is to be published before February 9. The Guardians, who comprise six clerics appointed by Khamenei and six legal experts named by the conservative-controlled parliament, were due to have finished their scrutiny on Friday. They have the last word on the candidates, following a preliminary vetting by the interior ministry, which has rejected 401 of the total 6,860 who registered.