Islamic liberals barred from Iran's landmark council
elections
TEHRAN, Feb 7 (AFP) - Islamic liberals will be barred from running for
Iran's first ever municipal elections later this month, Vice-President
Hassan Habibi said Sunday.
Habibi, a member of the arbitrating committee set up to resolve a growing
political row over barred candidates, said members of the liberal Freedom
Movement of Iran (FMI) cannot run in the poll as the group is illegal.
According to the law "members of illegal organisations and parties
cannot run for elections," he said in comments published by the English
language Tehran Times.
Members of the banned but tolerated FMI, an Islamic liberal opposition
movement, have been disqualified along with reformist supporters of President
Mohammed Khatami by conservative-dominated election supervision committees.
The disqualification of moderate and left-wing candidates has sparked
a war of words between Khatami supporters and his conservative opponents.
Moderate Interior Minister Abdulvahed Musavi Lari, whose ministry is
responsible for running the elections through executive committees around
the country, has attacked the move to bar the candidates as "arbitrary".
But the conservatives have hit back, saying the minister is politicising
the poll.
Iran's late revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, slammed
the FMI, the main domestic opposition movement here, as too liberal and
pro-Western and Habibi, himself a moderate, said it should be judged on
the basis of the ayatollah's remarks.
The landmark vote is considered the Islamic regime's first great test
in local democracy, but it has provoked tension between conservatives and
reformers as both sides seek to consolidate their local power base ahead
of next year's parliamentary elections.
Moderates are concerned that vetting candidates will dampen public enthusiasm
and lead to a low turnout, particularly among the country's 30 million
or so youngsters who played a decisive role in bringing Khatami to office
in 1997.
About 330,000 candidates, including 5,000 women, have been approved
so far to stand in elections for 200,000 council seats.
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