The Guardian Council declared dozens of parliament members “incompetent”

The work of vetting candidates for the 11th term of the Islamic Consultative Assembly has been completed by Khamenei's appointees in the Guardian Council. It is said that the qualifications of dozens of current representatives, who were approved by the same council four years ago, have now been rejected.

Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei, spokesman for the Guardian Council, announced that in the final hours of Saturday, January 11, the work of reviewing the qualifications of candidates for the 11th term of the Islamic Consultative Assembly was completed, and the results were sent to governors and district governors for notification to registrants.

According to Note 2 of Article 52 of the Election Law, those whose qualifications are not confirmed can complain to the Guardian Council. For this reason, the final statistics of rejections and confirmations of qualified candidates will be finalized after the complaints are reviewed, but the experience of previous elections shows that the possibility of reconsidering the decisions made is very small.

Typically, most attention is focused on disqualified prominent figures, including current members of parliament. It is said that at least a third of the current members of parliament from Tehran, all of whom entered the 10th parliament on the "Omid" list, have been disqualified.

Unprecedented rejection of the qualifications of parliamentarians

The Khabar Online website says that some news reports indicate the disqualification of 135 current members of parliament. If this news is true, this could be the highest number of disqualifications of members of parliament for the next term, and it has never been at this level before.

Four years ago, although the Guardian Council did not approve the qualifications of nearly 60% of the candidates, the number of members of the Ninth Parliament who were disqualified was about 50.

The six jurists of the Guardian Council, who are appointees of the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, Ali Khamenei, play a key role in rejecting or approving the qualifications of candidates for parliamentary elections.

According to a chart published by IRNA, in provinces such as Alborz and Kermanshah, less than 40 percent of candidates have been approved for eligibility. This rate is between 40 and 50 percent for the provinces of Tehran, Isfahan, Bushehr, Hormozgan, Kurdistan, Ilam, Golestan, West Azerbaijan, and Sistan and Baluchestan.

Among those disqualified from Tehran are the names of Mahmoud Sadeghi, Ali Motahari, Tayyebeh Siavashi, Fatemeh Saeedi, and Alireza Mahjoub. Sadeghi and Mahjoub have suggested that their disqualification may have occurred due to a similarity in their names, and Motahari said that he had not yet received the governor's letter. Sadeghi confirmed his disqualification in a tweet shortly after.

Among the thirty representatives from Tehran province, some, such as Parvaneh Salahshouri and Mohammad Reza Aref, head of the Omid faction, the so-called reformist faction of the Islamic Republic government, have not registered to run in the election. Ali Larijani, the current speaker of the parliament, is another notable absentee this term.

Disqualification of 25 Khuzestan and Fars MPs

According to the IRNA news agency, 16 of the 18 current representatives from Khuzestan province in the 10th parliament and 9 of the same number from Fars province have been disqualified. The report adds that in Ardabil, reformists and in East and West Azerbaijan, conservatives have accounted for a larger share of the disqualifications.

According to the latest statistics announced by Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli, around 14,000 people across Iran have registered to run in the parliamentary elections. Nearly 90 percent of those registered are said to be men.

These competitions are being held to win one of the 290 seats in the 11th parliament in 208 electoral districts. The first round of parliamentary elections will be held in February.

According to reports, in the 10th parliamentary elections, more than 12,000 people registered as candidates, but based on the official report of the Guardian Council, only 42% of them were confirmed eligible.

Increase in the number of volunteers despite Khamenei's criticism

The two-thousand-strong increase in the number of volunteers during this period occurred despite the fact that the Leader of the Islamic Republic and Kadkhodaei had strongly criticized the large number of volunteers before the registration began.

Abbasali Kadkhodaei cites one of the reasons for the high number of disqualifications in recent elections as the increase in the number of registered voters compared to the 1960s and 1970s. He says that in recent years, “everyone feels obligated to participate in the elections,” and laments that “we are witnessing a festival of registration.”

The Guardian Council spokesperson told media executives on December 21 about how to review qualifications: "We have extracted three main axes from the current law and made them the basis and criteria for our actions; economic corruption, moral corruption, and opposition to the system and the revolution are the three main axes of the Guardian Council in reviewing qualifications, and we stand firmly on these three axes."

Typically, “lack of practical commitment” to Islam and the absolute authority of the jurist is the most important reason for disqualification of candidates for election, and most current members of parliament have been disqualified on this charge. One prominent figure whose eligibility has been confirmed is Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, the former mayor of Tehran, who some had speculated would be disqualified due to municipal corruption cases. He is being mentioned as a possible candidate to take Ali Larijani’s seat.

Source: DW