TEHRAN, 26 January 2004 — Iran’s reformists yesterday challenged their hard-line rivals in a weeks-long standoff over eligibility of candidates for next month’s elections. The Majlis, or Parliament, passed a “triple-urgent” bill aimed at forcing the powerful Guardian Council to reinstate thousands of reformist candidates barred from the election.
MPs approved the bill aimed at making it easier for candidates to stand, in direct challenge to the Guardian Council whose election blacklist has triggered a political crisis in the country.
The conservative-controlled council, which vets legislation and candidates for office, barred 3,605 of 8,157 prospective candidates, most of them reformers, from standing in the Feb. 20 election.
Dozens of reformist MPs, ministers, governors and even President Mohammad Khatami, have threatened to resign en masse in protest at the disqualifications that could paralyze the new legislature, due to convene in June.
Among those rejected are 80 sitting MPs, as well as other prominent figures.
In the emergency session yesterday, the reformist-dominated Majlis approved a provision in the bill which would prevent the Guardian Council from disqualifying sitting MPs unless they had been convicted of a criminal offense. A second provision would prevent disqualifications based on any criteria other than Iran’s common law, a response to the council’s rejection of a number of candidates for alleged failures to respect Islam or the constitution.
The measure was approved during an open session of Parliament, aired live on Tehran radio. The speaker asked those in favor to stand, then declared it passed.
While the Parliament approved the general outlines of the bill, details were to be debated later in the presence of 11 Guardian Council members.
The vote came only a day after Khatami and the Speaker of Parliament, Mehdi Kharoubi, demanded a “full review” of the blacklist.
But the electoral laws, passed by Parliament less than a month before the election, still have to be approved by the 12-member council, a bastion of Iran’s religious right which has consistently blocked such efforts in the past.
The fate of the bill is likely to be known today, with all the signs pointing to a council veto of the reforms.
“These amendments weaken the council’s legal position and give more power to the (reformist-run) Interior Ministry which organizes elections,” charged conservative MP Mussa Ghorbani.
Supreme leader Ali Khamenei moved to haul the country out of one of its worst ever crises by ordering the council to be less stringent in its vetting procedure, but only some 300 of the rejected candidates have so far been reinstated.
The council, whose members are directly or indirectly appointed by Khamenei, has been accused of seeking to rig the elections in order to oust reformers from the Majlis.
The body, which has defended its vetting process and insisted it is only exercising the laws of the Islamic Republic, has until Jan. 30 to certify the final list of candidates to the Interior Ministry.
That gives those finally approved only three weeks to pitch their views to an electorate already widely disillusioned, particularly voters who have supported Khatami and the reformists in the past.
Reformist MP Hossein Ansari-Rad warned that the electoral reforms may only serve to heighten political tensions.
