Iran: Iran's Guardian Council disclosed yesterday it had so far reversed only a tiny fraction of its bans on candidates for parliamentary elections despite a poll boycott threat by reformist President Mohammad Khatami's party.
The 12-man unelected conservative watchdog has barred nearly half the 8,200 candidates from running for the February 20th elections. Allies of Mr Khatami, including 80 of the standing 290 MPs, have been most affected.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the last word on all state matters, has urged the council to review its decisions, but it has been in no apparent rush to lift bans and has until the end of the month to review 3,100 appeals.
"So far . . . 200 (disqualified) candidates have been approved," said a statement on the hardline council's website. The figure represents about 5 per cent of the bans.
The disqualifications sparked a bitter political dispute.
Apart from the poll boycott threat by Mr Khatami's party, government ministers considered resignation and liberal MPs have reached the 10th day of a parliamentary sit-in.
Mr Khatami, in a letter carried by the official IRNA news agency, said he was optimistic about the chances of a fair election but stressed the hardliners' constitutional supremacy.
"The Guardian Council is the top decision-making body. We will observe its revised rulings," he wrote in the letter that made no reference to his party's threatened boycott.
Firebrand MP Ms Fatemeh Haqiqatjou said the row between reformists and conservatives had reached breaking point and the outcome would determine whether the country's Islamic constitution could survive.
"This is the climax of a confrontation between the elected and the appointed . . . on how to run the country," she was quoted as saying on IRNA. "The elected bodies are the representatives of the people and their will is the will of the people," she said.
The Guardian Council, composed of six clerics and six Islamic jurists, wields a power of veto over the elected parliament and has blocked dozens of its reformist bills. Ms Haqiqatjou said the key question would be whether the people threw their weight behind the protesting MPs.
- (Reuters)