On Wednesday Iran's provincial governors escalated the confrontation over who can run in next month's elections by declaring they would not allow polling in their areas unless most of the disqualifications are overturned.
"All provincial governors have announced unanimously that, under present circumstances, there will be no possibility of holding elections," Interior Ministry spokesman Jahanbakhsh Khanjani said.
While Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has the authority to overrule the governors, their declaration suggests that if the hard-liners responsible for the disqualifications do not back down, they will have to resort to extraordinary measures to hold the legislative elections on Feb. 20.
PHOTO: REUTERS
The hard-line Guardian Council has disqualified more than a third of the 8,200 candidates -- including more than 80 sitting lawmakers. The move has triggered Iran's biggest political crisis in years, with reformers accusing conservatives of trying to skewer the elections.
Khanjani said the governors made the decision at a meeting in Tehran that ended on Wednesday night.
Earlier Wednesday, Iran's largest group of pro-reform students urged people to boycott next month's elections in protest against the disqualifications. It was the first time any political group had called for a boycott since the crisis erupted.
Iranian President Mohammad Khatami tried to head off a boycott of the legislative elections on Feb. 20, telling reporters he would strive to reverse the disqualifications down to the last unfairly treated candidate.
"There is no possibility of fair and free elections," the student movement, the Office for Fostering Unity, said in a statement carried on the official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).
"Considering that people's votes have no affect on the establishment, and there is no way to hold fair and free elections, there is no justification for people to participate in this election," the students said in their statement.
The students praised the reformist lawmakers who have been staging sit-in protests in the parliament building since the disqualifications were announced earlier this month.
Khatami set aside earlier hints that he might resign over the affair and pledged to work both to reinstate the candidates and to defend the reform program that hard-liners have largely succeeded in blocking.
"Even if one person has been disqualified unfairly, as the president, I will defend his right," Khatami said Wednesday.
Appearing more confident than he has been in recent weeks, Khatami said: "If somebody is a thief, or is a drug smuggler or documents prove he has worked to overthrow the establishment, he is not qualified to run. But all those disqualified were so? ... Many of those disqualified deserve to run."
The Guardian Council has reinstated more than 700 candidates, Khatami said. "Based on our talks, this figure is set to rise," he added.
Iran's chief of elections, Deputy Interior Minister Morteza Moballegh, criticized the Guardian Council on Wednesday, accusing them of taking too long to review the disqualifications in a more sympathetic light, as Khamenei has urged them to do.
"Not even one prominent person or lawmaker is among those reinstated. The trend of reinstatements is not convincing," Moballegh said.
"If only a few disqualified persons are to be reinstated, we won't hold elections," Moballegh said.
The Burmese junta has said that detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi is “in good health,” a day after her son said he has received little information about the 80-year-old’s condition and fears she could die without him knowing. In an interview in Tokyo earlier this week, Kim Aris said he had not heard from his mother in years and believes she is being held incommunicado in the capital, Naypyidaw. Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was detained after a 2021 military coup that ousted her elected civilian government and sparked a civil war. She is serving a
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘NO AMNESTY’: Tens of thousands of people joined the rally against a bill that would slash the former president’s prison term; President Lula has said he would veto the bill Tens of thousands of Brazilians on Sunday demonstrated against a bill that advanced in Congress this week that would reduce the time former president Jair Bolsonaro spends behind bars following his sentence of more than 27 years for attempting a coup. Protests took place in the capital, Brasilia, and in other major cities across the nation, including Sao Paulo, Florianopolis, Salvador and Recife. On Copacabana’s boardwalk in Rio de Janeiro, crowds composed of left-wing voters chanted “No amnesty” and “Out with Hugo Motta,” a reference to the speaker of the lower house, which approved the bill on Wednesday last week. It is
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
RSS