TEHRAN, 15 May 2005 — Candidates wishing to stand in Iran’s presidential election next month had their last chance yesterday to register for a battle likely to pit top hard-liners against the more pragmatic conservative cleric and race favorite Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
Among around 800 would-be presidents to sign up was hard-liner Ali Larijani, a former state broadcast boss and adviser to the Islamic republic’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“Hashemi Rafsanjani has made the situation different, but my presence and my registering means that I am here to stay,” a dour-looking Larijani told reporters at the Interior Ministry, which closed its doors to prospective candidates later yesterday.
Iran’s main right-wing alliance, the Council for Coordinating Forces in the Islamic Revolution, has chosen him as its candidate. However a number of other top hardliners have come forward as well.
Also registering yesterday for a chance to succeed incumbent reformist President Mohammad Khatami was Ibrahim Yazdi, a top dissident and the leader of the banned Iran Freedom Movement.
He used his appearance at the ministry to renew calls for the “release of all political prisoners” — likely to be his only campaign declaration given that he is certain to be disqualified from the race.
After registering, would-be candidates will go through a tough screening process overseen by the Guardians Council — an unelected hard-line-controlled body that has the power to decide whose names can go on the ballot sheet.
Ahead of Iran’s parliamentary elections in 2004, the Guardians Council rejected 2,000 candidates, almost all of them reformists. Prior to the last presidential election in 2001, the Council accepted just 10 names out of 814 people who registered to stand.
Women are automatically barred from standing on the grounds of their sex — but the Interior Ministry said 58 women had signed up this year nevertheless.
Guardians Council spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham, quoted by IRNA, complained that some of those turning up to register were only doing it for “fun”.
“So far there have been 81 unemployed people, and more than 250 did not even have a high school diploma,” he said, also pointing out that “the Council’s opinion about women candidacies has been repeatedly stated.”
