Widespread disqualification of parliamentary elections | When the Iranian regime does not even consider current representatives as insiders

The widespread disqualifications in this year's parliamentary elections have even made their own representatives speak out, and it seems that this election has become more of a closed and one-sided election than any other.

While the elections for the 11th Majlis are scheduled to be held on March 2nd, the disqualifications of some prominent members of the current Majlis have led to these members now being included in the Jirga protesting these disqualifications.

According to official reports, 97 out of a total of 247 current members of the Islamic Consultative Assembly who had registered to run in the 11th term elections have been disqualified.

Among the prominent figures in the current parliament who failed to receive the approval of the Guardian Council are Ali Motahari, Mahmoud Sadeghi, Mohammad Reza Tabesh, Behrouz Nemati, Elias Hazrati, Tayyebeh Siavoushi, Gholam Reza Heydari, Mohammad Ali Vakili, Hamideh Zarabadi, and Mehdi Sheikh.

These disqualifications have occurred among the fundamentalists, albeit to a lesser extent. Current disqualified fundamentalist representatives include Mohammad Ali Pourmukhtar, Mohsen Kohkan, Seyyed Hossein Naqvi Hosseini, Nader Ghazipour, Gholamreza Kateb, and Hossein Maghsoudi.

The Islamic Republic has embarked on a massive disqualification of current representatives, even though it had approved the same representatives in the previous term, and this shows that the Iranian regime does not tolerate even people it itself had issued permits to attend parliament.

Previously, the US State Department spokesperson, in response to the disqualification of participants in the upcoming parliamentary elections by Khamenei's appointees on the Guardian Council, described the remaining individuals as "the same."

Morgan Ortagus tweeted that the Guardian Council, whose members are appointed by Khamenei, has disqualified most of the candidates for the Iranian parliamentary elections. It is no coincidence that all the remaining candidates are the same.

But Mahmoud Sadeghi, a current member of parliament, is among the disqualified candidates. He wrote in a tweet to Guardian Council spokesman Abbasali Kadkhodaei that "You have rejected 90 percent of the candidates of a deeply rooted political faction, and yet you keep talking about the elections being competitive?! Is there any merit in winning in an uncontested field, as one of the fundamentalist candidates put it?"

Reports also indicate that Farid Mousavi, the current representative of the people of Tehran in the parliament, is the only member of the party who has been certified in Tehran. In the National Trust Party, about 50 people from the National Trust Party had registered for the elections, of which about 13 were rejected in the first round and the rest were disqualified in the second round.

Ali Motahari, a member of parliament who was also disqualified, cited in a note citing Article 28, Paragraph 2, of the parliamentary election law the reason given for not confirming his qualification as “practical commitment to the sacred system of the Islamic Republic of Iran” and said, “No matter how much I thought, I couldn’t think of any place where I didn’t have a practical commitment to the system of the Islamic Republic. Probably, their concept of “system” is the leadership of the system. If I have had an opinion other than that of the leader somewhere – which I have – this is the same desire of the leader himself, who said several times, including in meetings with students, that someone may have an opinion that is contrary to mine, and that they should be free to speak their mind.”

These widespread denials of qualifications come at a time when the issue of boycotting elections is being heard more than ever in Iranian society. Students, among others, expressed their demand in their recent protests with the slogan "No ballot box, no votes, boycott the elections."

Brian Hook, the US State Department's special representative for Iran, called the upcoming parliamentary elections in the Islamic Republic of Iran "a show" whose winners and losers have been predetermined by the clerics.

Previously, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in a message while expressing support for the Iranian people, said that the regime was manipulating and rigging the parliamentary elections.

Source: Voice of America