TEHRAN, 2 February 2004 — More than a third of the Iranian Parliament handed in resignations yesterday to protest the decision by hard-liners to disqualify hundreds of would-be legislators in upcoming elections.
Letters of resignation were submitted to parliamentary Speaker Mahdi Karroubi by reformists who said they could not go ahead with the Feb. 20 elections. It was initially signed by 109 liberal legislators, but later grew to 117 members. Karroubi said each resignation will be discussed and put to vote in future sessions of the Parliament, but he did not say how long that process would take. He insisted that the final decision on the resignations rested with Parliament.
Among those who resigned were 80 sitting lawmakers disqualified from running as well as others who had been reinstated.
In a letter read aloud in the 290-seat Majlis, or Parliament, liberal lawmaker Rajab Ali Mazrouie said that the result of elections held under restrictions imposed by the hard-line Guardian Council would be a foregone conclusion.
“An election whose result is clear beforehand is a treason to the rights and ideals of the nation,” the lawmaker told some 200 legislators attending yesterday’s session.
He said such elections would be “illegitimate and unacceptable to the nation.”
The resignations came a day after the pro-reform President Mohammad Khatami, suffering severe back pain, called off an emergency Cabinet meeting that was to deal with the confrontation between reform-minded legislators and the hard-liners of the powerful Guardian Council.
Karroubi said that he and Khatami had begun “new efforts” to resolve the crisis, and that they had been holding discussions with Ali Khamenei, who hand-picks most of the clerics on the Guardian Council, and can overrule its decisions. A dejected Karroubi appealed to Khamenei to resolve the crisis, and accused the Guardian Council of “disrespecting democratic values and having no faith in a popular vote.”
Mohsen Mirdamadi, a pro-reform lawmaker who was among the 114 who resigned and was earlier rejected by the Guardian Council, said that the lawmakers would not compromise their democratic beliefs.
