Iran's parliament voted Sunday for an emergency reform of the electoral law aimed at forcing conservative religious rivals to reinstate thousands of reformist candidates barred from next month's election.
MPs backed amendments aimed at making it easier for candidates to stand, in a direct challenge to the powerful Guardians Council whose election blacklist has triggered a bitter political crisis in the Islamic republic.
The conservative-controlled council, which vets legislation and candidates for office, barred 3,605 of 8,157 prospective candidates, most of them reformers, from standing in the February 20 election.
Dozens of reformist MPs, ministers, governors and even President Mohammad Khatami, have threatened to resign en masse in protest at the disqualifications that could paralyse the new legislature, due to convene in June.
Among those rejected are 80 sitting MPs, as well as other prominent figures.
In the emergency session on Sunday, the reformist-dominated Majlis or parliament approved an amendment which would prevent the Guardians Council from disqualifying sitting MPs unless they had been convicted of a criminal offence.
A second amendment would prevent disqualifications based on any other criteria than Iran's common law, a response to the Council's rejection of a number of candidates for alleged failures to respect Islam or the constitution.
The vote came only a day after Khatami and the speaker of parliament, Mehdi Karubi, demanded a "full review" of the blacklist.
But the electoral reforms, drawn up less than a month before the election, still have to be approved by the 12-member council, a bastion of Iran's religious right which has consistently blocked efforts to shake up the 25-year-old Islamic republic.
The fate of the amendments is likely to be known later Sunday or on Monday, with all the signs pointing to a council veto of the reforms.
"These amendments weaken the council's legal position and give more power to the (reformist-run interior ministry which organises the polls)," charged ultra-conservative MP Mussa Ghorbani.
Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei moved to haul the Islamic republic out of one of its worst ever crises by ordering the council to be less stringent in its vetting procedure, but only some 300 of the rejected candidates have so far been reinstated.
The council, whose 12 members are directly or indirectly appointed by Khamenei, has been accused of seeking to rig the polls in order to oust reformers from the Majlis.
The body, which has defended its vetting process and insisted it is only exercising the laws of the Islamic republic, has until January 30 to certify the final list of candidates to the interior ministry.
That gives those finally approved only three weeks to pitch their views to an electorate already widely disillusioned, particularly voters who have supported Khatami and the reformists in the past.
"We are opposed to illegal control by a body which sometimes claims to know men better than God himself knows them," said reformist MP Mohsen Armin.
But another reformer, Hossein Ansari-Rad, warned that the electoral reforms may only serve to heighten political tensions.
"We may find ourselves jumping out of the frying pan into the fire."
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