Iran’s Guardian Council, which vets candidates for elections, has failed to qualify 40% of more than 12,000 candidates for parliamentary elections on 26 February, ILNA news agency has reported.
Reformists told Tehran Bureau that those blocked included the vast majority of their hopefuls. “I predicted that the Guardian Council would massively disqualify the reformists,” said Sadegh Zibakalam, professor of political science at Tehran University. “But the reality is even worse.”
According to Hossein Marashi, a member of the Reformists’ Policy Council, which was set up in October to coordinate efforts for the parliamentary poll, out of the total 3,000 reformist candidates, only 30, or 1%, have been qualified. Their criterion of ‘reformist’ appears unclear, and may include pragmatic conservatives, or ‘moderates’, like supporters of president Hassan Rouhani or former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
Two of Rafsanjani’s children, Mehdi and Fatemeh, are among those not qualified, as is Morteza Eshraghi, grandson of the founder of the Islamic Republic Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. In Tehran, from nearly 1,700 candidates, 760 were qualified, among which only four - Mohammad-Reza Aref, Soheila Jelodarzadeh, Mostafa Kavakebian and Alireza Mahjoub - were reformists, according to the reformist newspaper Arman.
After gathering information on each candidate from four bodies; the intelligence ministry, the police, the justice ministry and the Interior Ministry, the Guardian Council’s Central Board of Supervision announced on 17 January that it had disqualified 25% of would-be candidates, adding that it could not “authenticate” the qualification of another 29%.
Zibakalam told Tehran Bureau that if these four bodies all cleared a candidate, then the council did not have the constitutional power to bar them from the election. But he suspected foul play over the council’s claim it could not authenticate some candidates’ qualifications. “The Guardian Council plays with words,” he said. “I think this is a violation of the constitution, but unfortunately it’s happening.”
Ghorban Ali Dorri-Najafabadi, the leader’s representative in Markazi province and vice-chairman of the Assembly of Experts, also expressed concern, asking the Guardian Council to review the disqualifications as well as the cases of “unauthenticated” candidates. Dorri-Najafabadi said that the council needed to explain how the term “not being authenticated” differed from disqualification.
The council, consisting of six theologians appointed by the supreme leader and six Islamic jurists, has often been strict on vetting candidates. For the last parliamentary election, held in March 2012, 40% out of nearly 5,500 would-be candidates were not qualified.
At that time, most hopefuls were conservatives, as reformists were largely shunning politics after the disputed 2009 presidential election and the house arrest of two reformist leaders, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi. Since then, Rouhani’s victory in the 2013 presidential election has spurred talk of a loose coalition for the parliamentary elections stretching from pragmatic conservatives to some reformists.
The extent of disqualifications has surprised some officials, including the provincial governors in Tehran, Khouzestan, Ilam and Hormozgan. Rouhani has also expressed concern: during his press conference on 17 January on the lifting of international sanctions, he said he was unhappy with the “initial reports” on the Guardian Council’s decisions.
“The qualification of some of the candidates has not been authenticated,” Rouhani said. “Hopefully the Guardian Council will look into it. And as the president, I will also use all my executive powers in this regard.”
Zibakalam blamed “illegal disqualifications” on “principle-ists” who he said were concerned at the possible re-emergence of the reformists, who have been largely sidelined from politics since 2009.
He told Tehran Bureau the reformists now expected the president to step forward: “According to the constitution, as the president and the country’s second power [after the leader] Mr Rouhani should supervise the implementation of the constitution. So now everyone’s expecting him to protest against the wide disqualifications.”
Disqualified candidates have the right for three days to object to the council’s decision, while the council has 20 days from 17 January to review complaints, investigate the “unauthenticated” and announce its final list of qualified candidates.
The Tehran Bureau is an independent media organisation, hosted by the Guardian. Contact us @tehranbureau
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