including some sitting deputies who have been especially critical of President Ahmadi-nejad.
This is not the final approved list of candidates. The Council of Guardians will do that. All those rejected this week by the Interior Ministry may appeal within four days and have a second chance.
But critics are saying the Interior Ministry used its review authority to ax those most hostile to the president in the current Majlis. Various news reports said 30 to 40 sitting deputies had been rejected, but the inexact number suggested the source for those figures didn’t really know how many had been rejected.
The Iranian Labor News Agency (ILNA) said it had talked to a number of deputies who were rumored to have been axed. Some said they had not yet received any word in writing from the Interior Ministry on their fate.
But others who said they had received word included Deputies Ali Motahari of Tehran, Peyman Foruzesh of Zahedan and Mohammad-Mehdi Shahr-iyari of Khorasan North. All of them are conservatives and major critics of Ahmadi-nejad.
Motahari led the effort to call Ahmadi-nejad before the Majlis for questioning and a vote on approval or disapproval. Motahari is the son of one of the great clerical leaders of the revolution, Ayatollah Morteza Motahari, who was assassinated in 1979.
Deputy Motahari and the other two rejected deputies told ILNA they had received notice that they were disqualified based on paragraphs one and two of Clause 28 of the election law, which requires candidates to show “trust and practical commitment to Islam and the Islamic Republic of Iran” and “loyalty to the Constitution and the principle of guardianship of the jurisconsult.”
Deputy Foruzesh translated that to mean, “We were disqualified for the questions we posed to the president.”
Oddly, the Interior Ministry failed to say exactly how many candidates had been approved. Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar said of 5,405 applicants—10 more than the ministry had announced when applications closed—a total of 17 percent had been rejected. That would leave something like 4,486 approved candidates, but no number was given.
Najjar said 260 of the 287 sitting deputies filed to run for re-election. He did not say how many were rejected.
Most of the election discussion coming from the regime centers on turning out a large number of voters and countering “plots” to reduce the turnout.
The Islamic Republic has always treated turnout as a vote for the regime. The implication of a low turnout is that the regime lacks legitimacy.
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi personally made an appeal last week for everyone to vote. He is likely to repeat that appeal endlessly over the next seven weeks leading up to the elections.
Intelligence Minister Hey-dar Moslehi announced Sunday that some people have been arrested as spies for working on behalf of the United States to discourage voting. But Moslehi did not note that the West has never made an issue out of the fact the turnout has been quite low in some previous elections. It is the regime that has convinced itself that a high turnout is needed for legitimacy, but the West has never related turnout in Iran to legitimacy or lack of it.
The Judiciary announced last week that any calls to boycott the elections delivered by email or social networking sites would be treated as crimes against national security, showing the sensitivity of the regime to the threat of a boycott.
Another unanswered question is how many reformists registered to be candidates and how many have been rejected by the Interior Ministry.
Deputy Mostafa Kavakeb-ian, the head of the small reformist Democratic Party, said about 700 reformists filed. Kava-kebian, who serves in the Majlis from Semnan, has broken with many other reformists and wants to see a reformist slate offered to the public—as do many, if not most, of the 40-odd reformists serving in the current Majlis.
Kavakebian said about 100 of those who filed were known reformist figures, many of whom had served in previous Majlises, while the others were supporters but not well-known.
“We believe that we cannot realize any of the reformist demands through non-participation and that the only way for reforms to happen will be through the ballot box.” He said his group would publish a slate of endorsed reformist candidates if candidates for at least 150 seats were approved for the elections.
There are 290 seats in the Majlis.
Kavakebian appeared to be trying to entice the authorities into approving a large number of reformist candidates. Since the regime is fearful of a low turnout, Kavakebian might feel he can get more reformists approved by his offer of participation. Of course, the regime might respond by approving unknown reformists to run in very conservative districts where they would not stand a chance.