In a move reflecting the seriousness of Iran's political crisis, Interior Minister Abdolvahed Mussavi-Alari on Thursday asked for next month's parliamentary elections to be delayed so a row over the blacklisting of thousands of candidates can be resolved.
In a letter to the conservative Guardians Council, which has banned thousands of mainly pro-reform candidates, Mussavi-Alari asked for the Feb. 20 elections to be delayed and said he was prepared to propose a new date, the state IRNA news agency reported.
Given "the necessity of reviewing the process to permit the organizing of free and fair elections and to give the Guardians Council the time to create the appropriate conditions for these elections, I ask this council to urgently study my request," IRNA quoted the minister's letter as saying.
His request came just ahead of a final review of the blacklist by the council yesterday and after serious questions were raised over whether the elections could even go ahead with just three weeks to go.
There was no immediate response from the council. The interior ministry, which is responsible for organizing elections, has called the massive disqualification of candidates "illegal."
Earlier in the day, the Islamic republic's pro-reform provincial governors had demanded the polls be postponed as hardliners signalled they would only rescind a small proportion of their controversial candidate blacklist.
The governors, all of whom were appointed by reformist President Mohammad Khatami, said the mass disqualification meant that free and fair polls were impossible.
Their call came a day after Iran's main pro-democracy student movement, the Office to Consolidate Unity (OCU), called for a nationwide boycott of the polls and demanded a referendum on the country's political future -- ironically at a time when Iranians were supposed to be celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Islamic revolution.
The elections were plunged into crisis when the unelected but powerful Guardians Council -- a right-wing bastion which screens all laws and candidates for public office -- blacklisted 3,605 of 8,157 prospective candidates who registered to contest the polls.
Those barred by the Guardians Council included some 80 sitting MPs and prominent leaders of the reform movement. The body has drawn widespread allegations that it is trying to force out reformers, most of whose legislation it has binned over the past four years.
But despite the charges, a spokesman of the body's electoral vetting arm had told state television that it "will not give in to any pressure or propaganda."
In the appeals process, Seyed Mohammad Jahromi said "more than 90 percent of the cases that we are reviewing have been dealt with, and 861 of the disqualified have been reinstated."
That could still leave a blacklist of over 2,700 -- way short of demands from top reformists in the parliament, provinces and cabinet who are threatening to resign.
The 12-member Guardians Council was due to hand its final list of approved candidates to the reformist-run interior ministry -- which has also threatened not to run the elections -- late yesterday.
Four Cabinet ministers are also conducting an inquiry ordered by senior regime officials, including supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and were due to finish their probe into reformist complaints yesterday.
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