Shirin Ebadi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, joined protesters on Tuesday in announcing that she would not vote in parliamentary elections tomorrow for which more than 2,000 candidates were disqualified by the government.
"I cannot tell people to vote or not to vote, but I will not vote because I do not know any of the candidates who have been allowed to run," said Ebadi, a human rights lawyer.
"I would have voted if I knew and trusted the candidates," she said.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Her statement, just 48 hours before the elections, intensified the standoff that has been building between reformist supporters of President Mohammad Khatami and their hardline opponents since January, when a watchdog council rejected liberal candidates.
Nearly 130 deputies resigned in protest and the leading reform party is boycotting the elections. This week, 679 candidates whose qualifications had been approved withdrew in protest as well.
On Tuesday, reformist members of parliament broke a long-established taboo and wrote an open letter to the country's supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that criticized his policies.
"You lead a system in which legitimate freedoms and the rights of the people are being trampled on in the name of Islam," said the letter, which was distributed in parliament.
"The organs under your authority have for four years humiliated the parliament and its deputies by blocking legislation and have openly blocked the most basic right of the people: to choose and be chosen," it said.
The reference was to the Guardian Council, which has disqualified over 2,000 candidates. The letter also implied that Khamenei, despite his public statements, had approved the disqualifications.
Khamenei has issued an order saying the vote could not be delayed, and hardliners are counting on a low turnout in the hope that they can win a majority in the 290-seat parliament by mobilizing their supporters.
In a statement released on Monday, Khatami appealed to people to go to the polls "despite the unfairness of the election," the Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
He said that a low turnout could result in a minority gaining control of the parliament, which would not be in its interests or those of the country.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS