TEHRAN—The Iranian parliamentary elections are approaching. The government has promised a fair and transparent election.The Guardian Council which oversees political elections and screens candidates stated it remains sensitive to election fraud and will do all it can to ensure the parliamentary elections are beyond reproach.
At a press briefing in Iran, Abbas Ali Kadkhodayi, a spokesperson for the Guardian Council, stated “the Guardian Council is ready to nullify the results regardless of the political background of the candidates”.
According to observers in Iran, the Guardian Council routinely disqualifies candidates whose political platform differs from the ideology of the ruling clerics. In the past elections, the Guardian Council has shown a bias in favor of hard-line conservatives with strong connections to the Iranian revolutionary guard.
In the aftermath of the 2009 disputed presidential elections, the creditability of the Guardian Council was called into question amid allegations of election fraud.
Many in Iran and elsewhere question the way candidates for political office are selected. Unless approved by the Guardian Council to run, a candidate for political office is barred from participating in the election.
In its press briefing, the spokesperson for the Guardian Council made clear that candidates associated with the reform movement will not be allowed to run in the upcoming parliamentary elections.
Kadkhodayi told reporters those involved in the “2009 sedition will not be approved as candidates”. Sedition is a term the Iranian Supreme Leader has used repeatedly to refer to the popular uprising that followed the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The Guardian Council has rejected the allegation of voter fraud in the 2009 disputed presidential election.
The two reformist candidates MirHosein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi who ran unsuccessfully against Ahmadinejad maintain the government orchestrated a massive election fraud to make certain Ahmadinejad’s re-election
Mehdi Karroubi is currently under house arrest after the Green Party requested a government permit stage a public rally on February 14. Mousavi’s movements are closely monitored with a guard posted in front of his home. However, he is not formally placed under house arrest.
The Ahmadinejad’s government has refused to issue a permit for the planned public march.
Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, a conservative cleric who heads the Guardian Council recently spoke at a gathering in the City of Esfahan and told supporters “The sedition of 2009 has been destroyed, but the leaders of that sedition, while having lost all credibility with the people, are sitting at home and dreaming that they have a place among the people and are making plans for a march on February 14."
Jannati’s remarks came as Iran celebrated the anniversary of its 1979 revolution.
Jannati’s remarks before a friendly crowd of supporters were aimed to underscore the Guardian Council’s tight grip on Iranian election and served as a reminder to non-conformist candidates that they have no place in Iranian politics.
To drive his point home, Jannati told the regime’s supporters “A group of unsavoury individuals, who have separated themselves from the path of the people, are sitting on the sides plotting, and thinking that they can occupy parliamentary seats and cheat the Guardian Council.”