TEHRAN, 2 June 2003 — Iranian President Mohammad Khatami yesterday signaled his determination to push through two key bills aimed at limiting the powers of hard-liners that were rejected by a constitutional oversight body.
In a letter to ally and parliamentary speaker Mehdi Karubi, Khatami said the twin bills — seen as a last-ditched bid to challenge conservatives in the country — would be modified but not fundamentally changed.
The bills would strip the Guardians Council of its right to vet candidates for public office and enable the president to challenge the judiciary, another bastion of the conservatives.
After being pushed through the reformist-held Parliament last year, the bills were rejected by the Guardians Council, which screens legislation to ensure it falls in line with the constitution and Shariah laws.
According to the constitution, if a bill is rejected then Parliament can either revise it or refer it to the Expediency Council, another unelected conservative-held body designed to arbitrate between the Majlis and Guardians. But Khatami said sending the bills for arbitration to the Expediency Council — headed by powerful former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani — would be an admission of defeat.
“We have studied the objections of the Guardians Council, and have proposed solutions to find an agreement,” the president wrote, adding that he would not accepts any “modification in the nature” of the bills.
“To send the two texts to the Expediency Council would be to recognize that they go against the constitution and the Shariah, and I refuse to take any step against these even if the Expediency Council decided so,” the president wrote.
He said the bills were designed to “guarantee the right of everyone to be a candidate or to elect a particular candidate,” something which he said was “one of the fundamental principles of religious democracy.”
The other aim, Khatami wrote, was to assert the position of the president “as the number-two figure in the state after the supreme leader, responsible for the application of the constitution, with the minimum powers needed to do so.”
He called on the Majlis, or Parliament, to take into account the Guardians Council’s objections for the bills to receive final approval.
Other reformists have called for a referendum to be held on the issue — a step that would require the approval of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — or even staging a mass resignation from the system.
Reformists are trying to push through the bill on candidate vetting ahead of legislative elections in 2004 and presidential elections in 2005. The Guardians Council has in the past used its powers to block hundreds of reformists from standing.
