TEHRAN, 16 January 2004 — Reformist lawmakers vowed yesterday to keep up their daily sit-ins in Parliament despite intervention from Iran’s supreme leader aimed at resolving a political crisis that jeopardizes the credibility of next month’s elections.
Ali Khamenei on Wednesday ordered the 12-member Guardian Council he appoints to reconsider its disqualification of more than 3,000 people — including 80 sitting reformist lawmakers — as candidates for Feb. 20 elections. The move was seen as a way to bolster hard-liners in the long-simmering power struggle with allies of President Mohammad Khatami who seek social and political reform.
Though expressing relief at “the first positive results” of efforts to overturn disqualifications, the protesting lawmakers issued a statement saying: “Our demand is free and fair elections, and we will continue our sit-ins until we are confident that the process has reversed.” Meysan Saeidi, a disqualified lawmaker, said he and the approximately 90 other reformists gathering for several hours daily in the Parliament lobby, won’t call off the sit-ins, in their fifth day, until all 3,000 people are reinstated. They are waiting, he said, to see how the Guardian Council interprets Khamenei’s order.
“We believe the Guardian Council will try to do the least possible in regard to those parts of Khamenei’s speech that favored reformists, and to implement to the maximum Khamenei’s words that favored hard-liners,” Saeidi said. Khamenei met members of the Guardian Council, the body responsible for the disqualifications, Wednesday. He told them to reconsider the candidates and roughly outlined how they should judge whether a person is legally qualified to seek office. It was not clear how long that process might take.
Incumbent legislators — who would already have been approved by the council for past elections — should be deemed qualified to run “unless it’s proven otherwise,” Khamenei was quoted by the official Islamic Republic News Agency as saying.
For new candidates, he was quoted as saying that “logical and common qualification is sufficient, and there is no need for further investigation.”
Khamenei, however, also instructed the Guardian Council that it should resist bullying tactics used by some lawmakers. He was not specific.
Before Khamenei’s intervention on Wednesday, President Khatami had urged lawmakers to end their sit-ins.
Meanwhile, sources said government officials were likely to drop their threats to resign. The resignation threats by ministers and 27 state governors were made in protest at the Guardian Council’s decision.
“To avoid tension in the country, those who have threatened to quit will drop their resignation threats,” said one official among at least 16 members of Khatami’s Cabinet who said this week they would step down.
