Iran's election struggle rages on ... decisions of the reformists in response to the rejection of the eligibility of their candidates

Tehran-Al-Jazeera Net

After the Guardians Council, which is affiliated with the conservative movement, rejected the eligibility of most of its prominent candidates, the Supreme Council for Reforming the Front's policies in Iran decided not to put forward any electoral list in the capital, Tehran, and authorized the provincial councils to decide whether to participate in the upcoming legislative elections. Meanwhile, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei called for wide participation in the elections.

A statement issued by the reformist council stressed that the supervisory circles - by excluding the reformist candidates - prevented the opportunity for their parties and prominent personalities to attend the capital and its suburbs during the elections scheduled for February 21, stressing that the council will respect the decision of the parties under its mantle to contest the race Electoral election without belonging to it.

Corrective stream
The reformist movement includes a group of political parties, forces, and groups that say it seeks reform from within the system of government, and adopts - in general - the trend towards religious renewal and modernization based on democratic practice. Many of its components represented the left as the beginnings of the 1979 revolution.

The number of reformist parties and movements may reach more than fifty groups, some of which are banned after their advocacy of the green movement and the popular protests that followed the re-election of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009, during which people were killed and injured, and the leaders of the protests, Mir Hussain Mousavi and Mahdi Karoubi, were placed under house arrest.

The reformists won a landslide victory in the last legislative elections and controlled more than 43% of its seats, compared to 31% for the conservative movement and 26% for independents, religious minorities, and others.

The rejection of the eligibility of the reformist candidates by the Guardians Council was not the first of its kind - as the reformists say - they faced similar circumstances during the fourth legislative elections, and they were repeated in the seventh session, when 75 of the sixth parliament members were excluded.

In some cases, the reformists were forced to form alliances with moderate conservative figures to confront what they considered "the most militant color in the conservative current."

Arrows of the guide
The reformists ’decision comes on the eve of statements by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, during which he defended the Guardian Council and its“ integrity and stature ”and called on all segments of the people to participate intensively that guarantees the security of the Islamic Republic and solves its problems, adding that there may be people who do not like me but must participate in voting if His country loves Iran.

Khamenei's statements included harsh criticism of President Hassan Rouhani and others - without naming them - for attacking the Guardian Council because of his refusal to qualify many of the reformist candidates, describing the attacking and accusations of the council as "the worst acts" that are considered "major sins" and require repentance.

He criticized the statements of some faces and accused her of marginalizing the elections by presenting frustrating positions that spread the spirit of despair among the people, surprising the positions of those who took positions through the elections but doubted them and addressed them when the elections are in your favor, then they are valid, but when they do not serve you, they are invalid?

The guide described the words of those who talk about "election engineering" as a lie, and considered them the most fair elections in the world and urged those who have an important responsibility in the government, MPs, writers and activists in the digital media to pay attention to their positions.

The President has repeatedly criticized the Guardian Council for targeting reformist figures, and implicitly accused him of engineering elections, warning that the country cannot be run by a single political stream without the participation of others.

Rouhani also called for competitive elections, and he warned against turning them into inaugurations, stressing that "the elections do not make sense if the candidates are of one color."

The conservatives and the reformists' decision
After the reformists decided their decision not to put forward any unified list in the upcoming elections, the conservative media started publishing reports on the movements of some reformist parties to present a list under the title "The Reformers Capital Alliance" and contesting the electoral race in the absence of the Supreme Council's list for the reformist front policies.

The Fars and Tasnim agencies close to the Revolutionary Guards have published reports of behind-the-scenes negotiations between 12 reformist parties to come up with a unified list in the capital.

While Shaheen Molarudi, a former reformist activist, expected that the upcoming elections would not witness a massive popular presence due to the absence of the voices of some segments of society in them, she made it clear that it seems that the large participation in the elections is no longer on the ladder of the monitoring circles and their concerns.

Local observers believe that the decision to engage the reformists in the current circumstances may come to prevent the competing current from working to remove their current from the political scene, after controlling the majority of parliamentary seats that would withdraw its outcome on the presidential elections scheduled for 2021.