KEEP THE PEDAL TO THE METAL:

Iran to end vote dispute: Many barred candidates will be reinstated (The International Herald Tribune, January 27, 2004)
 

TEHRAN A bitter political dispute over the mass disqualification of reformist candidates for Iran's parliamentary elections next month is close to being resolved, the Parliament speaker, Mehdi Karroubi, said on Tuesday.

"In the next couple of days we will witness a very good understanding between the government and the Guardian Council," Karroubi told reporters.

He said the Guardian Council would announce by Friday the reinstatement of many of the candidates it had barred from running in the Feb. 20 race.

The candidate bans imposed by the hard-line Guardian Council - an unelected 12-member body of clerics and jurists with sweeping powers - plunged Iran into its worst political crisis in years and prompted international concern over the legitimacy of the coming vote.

The vast majority of those barred were President Mohammad Khatami's reformist allies, whom hard-liners accuse of undermining the values of the Islamic Republic and trying to shift Iran from clerical to secular rule.

Reformist Parliament members, dozens of whom have been holding a 16-day sit-in, said they would resign on Sunday if the Guardian Council did not reinstate the candidates. Reformist parties also said they might boycott the vote, and government officials have threatened not to organize the vote.

But Karroubi said around 500 disqualified candidates, including many current Parliament members, would be reinstated on Tuesday and more would be reinstated by the end of Thursday.

It's remarkable the degree to which the adoption of the rhetoric and the forms of democracy can force even the unwilling to behave in democratic ways, but those who genuinely want reform in Iran should keep pressing their advantage.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 27, 2004 12:03 PM