Iran's conservative vetting body has rejected more than half of the reformist candidates for March 14 parliamentary polls, a reformist spokesman said on Wednesday. Iranians are to choose a new parliament, in hugely significant polls in which moderates have been seeking to launch a comeback by overturning conservative dominance of the legislature.
"We can say more than 50 percent of our candidates were disqualified throughout the country," the Reformists' Coalition spokesman Abdollah Nasseri told AFP. Inspired by former president Mohammad Khatami, the coalition brings together 21 groups, including the largest reformist party, Islamic Iran's Participation Front (IIPF), and the Organisation of Islamic Revolution Mujahedeen.
Interior ministry committees were tasked with screening 7,168 hopefuls for the polls by gathering information from the police, intelligence ministry, the judiciary and by making local inquiries.
"Practically all IIPF and Mujahedeen candidates were rejected," Nasseri said of the two groups whose members served as key cabinet ministers and lawmakers during Khatami's presidency from 1997 to 2005. The IIPF condemned the "illegal actions" which have resulted in the mass disqualification and called on "all top Iranian officials to work towards holding a truly free, healthy and fair election" their statement said.
Another prominent reformist party - National Confidence, headed by former parliament speaker Mehdi Karroubi - had 70 percent of its candidates rejected. "There are no conditions for a real competition," its spokesman Esmail Gerami Moqaddam told AFP. According to one reformist politician, the mass disqualification showed the conservatives' resolve to prevent a comeback by the reformists, who lost their last key position to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005.