Iran's supreme leader has ordered a review of the thousands of disqualified candidates for the legislative elections, a government spokesman said yesterday.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's move is a bid to defuse a crisis that has seen two major organs of state lock horns over the elections due on Feb. 20. The reformist government of President Mohammad Khatami has refused to stage the polls unless the disqualifications are overturned. The hard-line Guardian Council has refused to withdraw its disqualification of about 30 percent of the 8,200 people who applied to run in the polls.
The news of Khamenei's review order -- his second in less than a month -- came a day after he was reported to have rejected a request by President Khatami for the elections to be postponed.
Spokesman Abdollah Ramezanzadeh said Khamenei decided on the review in a meeting with Khatami on Tuesday.
"We hope to achieve a final result as soon as possible that would allow us to hold an election with a huge turnout," Ramezanzadeh told reporters.
"I think we can expect some positive results tomorrow," Ramezanzadeh added. He did not elaborate.
Ramezanzadeh's announcement was the first in days that suggested the elections might go ahead as planned. On Tuesday, scores of reformist lawmakers called for the elections to be postponed. Also, Iran's provincial governors said in a statement posted on the Interior Ministry's Web site that they would not hold the elections -- suggesting that hard-liners would have to use the military to stage the polls.
The Guardian Council, which is appointed by Khamenei, has disqualified more than 2,400 people from the polls.
Reformers have protested the disqualifications as an attempt to fix the elections in favor of conservatives.
Hard-liners have denied any political motives, arguing that the disqualified lacked the criteria to stand. But the disqualified include 80 incumbent legislators.
Ramezanzadeh said the review would be conducted by the Intelligence Ministry.
A Cabinet minister indicated that most of the candidates, but not all, were likely to be restored to the ballot by the review.
"A large number are expected to be reinstated," said Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, a pro-reform minister who spoke to reporters yesterday.
While Ramezanzadeh and Zanganeh sounded upbeat about the review's prospects, reformists have been disappointed before.
Early last month, Khamenei urged the Guardian Council to reconsider the disqualifications. It did so, but its reinstatements were regarded as politically insignificant.
What makes the new review different is that it is to be conducted by a ministry that is nominally under the control of reformists.
When the list of approved candidates was first announced in early January, it emerged that the Guardian Council had disqualified about 3,600 people of the 8,200 who filed papers to stand.
After protests, and Khamenei's requested reconsideration, the council reinstated 1,160 low-profile names, but the major reformists -- including the leaders of the Islamic Iran Participation Front -- remained barred. Reformists rejected the reinstatements as cosmetic.
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