IRAN: Iranian MPs voted to change the country's electoral law yesterday, in a clear act of defiance of a conservative watchdog that has banned thousands of candidates from running in February's parliamentary election.
The hardline Guardian Council has barred nearly half of the 8,200 aspiring candidates from the February 20th poll, mainly allies of reformist President Mohammad Khatami, including 80 of the standing 290 MPs.
The proposed reform to the electoral law says candidates given the green light in previous elections cannot be blocked unless a full legal justification is submitted. This would save the candidacies of many disqualified MPs.
But before it can become law, the electoral reform passed by the reformist-dominated parliament must be approved by the Guardian Council - the very body that issued the disqualifications.
Dozens of top government officials have threatened to resign unless the Guardian Council overturns the bans. Several reformist political parties have said they may boycott the election.
Parliament Speaker Mehdi Karroubi called on the 12-man Guardian Council to prove its allegiance to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has called for a review of the bans.
"The Guardian Council must prove its loyalty to the Supreme Leader by acting in accordance with those instructions," he was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency.
President Khamenei has the last word on all state matters.
Protesting MPs are in the 15th day of a sit-in at parliament, camped out in dingy anterooms.
Iran's leading religious dissident Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, who helped draft Iran's constitution after the 1979 Islamic revolution, said the Guardian Council had moved beyond its original remit.
"The Guardian Council's role has switched from supervising elections to supervising candidates," he said in the text of an interview faxed by Montazeri's office. "The recent disqualifications are based on unwarranted allegations," he added.
Influential former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said the row over electoral bans was opening the country up to plots by foreign enemies trying to stir up popular discontent. - (Reuters)