Iran's hardline Guardian Council has rejected an electoral reform bill aimed at reversing its decision to ban hundreds of reformist candidates from standing for parliamentary elections, a reformist MP said yesterday.
Iran's reformist-dominated parliament passed the emergency reform proposal on Sunday in a clear act of defiance aimed at the Guardian Council, which has vetoed almost half of the 8,200 aspirants from running in the Feb. 20 election.
But the council, an unelected 12-member body comprised of conservative clerics and Islamic jurists, used its sweeping powers to reject the reform bill, further escalating Iran's worst political crisis in years.
"This indicates that the level of confrontation between the MPs and the Guardian Council continues and they [the council] don't want to accept any solution," lawmaker Reza Yousefian said.
"On the other hand, the MPs don't want to step back from their demands either," he said.
He said protesting MPs, who have held a two-week sit-in in parliament to protest against the mass vetting of candidates, would now consider their next move, which could include mass resignations or boycotting the elections.
Dozens of officials in reformist President Mohammad Khatami's government have threatened to resign unless the candidate bans are overturned. Khatami has also heavily criticized the move while insisting that a negotiated compromise can still be reached.
The political standoff has prompted US and European officials to voice concern that Iranians may be deprived of a fair election process.
Khatami's allies accuse the Guardian Council of seeking to help conservative candidates reverse their loss to reformists in the 2000 parliament elections.
They say they will be unable to contest about 190 of parliament's 290 seats unless the Guardian Council backs down.
The Guardian Council has been a key weapon in the armory of Iran's conservatives who fear that Khatami's efforts at reform could undermine the values of the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Designed as a counterweight to the elected parliament, the council can veto legislation it deems unconstitutional or incompatible with Islamic Sharia law -- a power it has used repeatedly to block reforms since Khatami's 1997 election win.
It can also bar election candidates it considers unfit for office for reasons such as lack of commitment to the Constitution or to the clerical establishment headed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The electoral reform approved by parliament would have made it more difficult for the Guardian Council to bar hopefuls on the grounds of lack of loyalty to the Constitution or Islam.
It also sought to enshrine in law recent guidance given to the council by Khamenei that those who have been deemed qualified to run in previous elections should not be barred unless there is solid evidence against them.
Around 80 sitting MPs, nearly all reformists, have been disqualified from next month's vote, including parliament's two deputy speakers and several female lawmakers.
The Guardian Council says it is reviewing more than 3,000 appeals lodged by disqualified candidates and has so far reinstated around 400 that were initially barred. It has until Jan. 30 to complete its review of the appeals.
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
Prime ministers, presidents and royalty on Saturday descended on Cairo to attend the spectacle-laden inauguration of a sprawling new museum built near the pyramids to house one of the world’s richest collections of antiquities. The inauguration of the Grand Egyptian Museum, or GEM, marks the end of a two-decade construction effort hampered by the Arab Spring uprisings, the COVID-19 pandemic and wars in neighboring countries. “We’ve all dreamed of this project and whether it would really come true,” Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly told a news conference, calling the museum a “gift from Egypt to the whole world from a
RSS