Parliament on Sunday approved an emergency amendment to the electoral law following mass disqualifications to make the supervisory boards` vetting of the prospective candidates less stringent. The amendment included addition of two clauses to the electoral law as countermeasure to the supervisory Guardians Council`s rejection of many parliamentary aspirants on the ground that they lacked faith in Islam and the Islamic establishment. One clause envisages that a candidate, whose record is in question, can run in the contests if his or her qualifications are endorsed by at least 10 local `trustees`, including city and village councilors as well as Friday prayer leaders. The criteria in the vetting process, according to this clause, is the country`s common law, according to which a candidate`s commitment to Islam, the leadership and the Constitution is established with his or her own declaration. The other clause states that any candidate whose qualification has been approved once cannot be barred unless there are legal evidence against them.
The amendments, however, have to go through the screening of the Guardians Council to see if they comply with the Islamic Sharia law and the Constitution. Over 3,600 candidates from among more than 8,000 of those registered for the February 20 elections have been declared as disqualified by the supervisory electoral boards. Dozens of incumbent MPs, mostly barred from standing again, have held sit-ins to protest the blanket disqualifications. On Saturday, press published the names of 76 deputy ministers who had tendered their resignations to President Khatami, including key deputy oil ministers Hossein Kazempour Ardebili, Mohammad Aqaie and a high-profile figure in the development of giant Asaluyeh gas field, Asadollah Salehi-Forouz. Among the disqualified are the first and second parliament deputies Mohammad Reza Khatami and Behzad Nabavi. President Khatami and Parliament Speaker Mehdi Karroubi have called for `a fundamental review at the earliest` of the wholesale disqualifications.
| Yep. That oughta do it. Bring 'em right around, by golly... |
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