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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Khatami furious over election disqualifications |
| 2008-02-08 |
| Iran’s ex-president Mohammad Khatami labelled the mass disqualification of reformist candidates for parliamentary elections as a “catastrophe” which threatens the Islamic revolution, the press reported on Thursday. “The disqualification by the executive committees is a catastrophe,” he said in comments first reported by the ISNA news agency late Wednesday. Executive committees working under the interior ministry last month disqualified over 2,000 mainly reformist candidates who were judged unsuitable to stand in the March 14 vote. Reformist officials have said the disqualifications have wrecked their chances of challenging the current conservative dominance of parliament. Jeopardises the revolution: “To see that the credentials of good, Muslim people being rejected is a problem,” lamented Khatami. “But a big and more sorrowful problem is the trend (of disqualification) which I believe jeopardizes the revolution, the system and the wellbeing of society,” he added. Khatami’s comments were his latest outspoken attack on the vetting process, which also destroyed reformist hopes in the last parliamentary election in 2004. The former president, who was seen as the main inspiration behind the main reformist coalition, has in the last months broken over two years of silence to make bitter attacks on the government and the handling of elections. “If the (disqualification) trend becomes permanent, it is very dangerous. “We should, without narrow-mindedness, guard the true values of our revolution,” he said in comments at a memorial service for the late reformist politician ex-deputy culture minister Ahmad Borghani. In order to stand, candidates must meet a number of qualifications, one of which is sufficient loyalty to the Islamic revolution and the idea of clerical leadership enshrined by its founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 Let's solve his problem for him (and for us): let's kill all the Ayatollahs (major nuke on the city of Qom, back-up attacks on anything that even LOOKS like a mosk - wor |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2008-02-08 16:10 |