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| Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei |
On June 14, exactly
five weeks from today, Iranians will flock to the polls to elect a new
president to succeed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Candidate registration
started Tuesday and ends tomorrow, Saturday.
Iran’s Mehr news agency put the number of
hopefuls who had already registered by Thursday night at 243.
An adviser to Iran's
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was one candidate who joined them earlier
today. By registering to run, lawmaker and former parliament speaker Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel becomes the first of a trio of Khamenei loyalists to do so.
Allied with
Haddad-Adel, 68, are former Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati,
67, and Tehran mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf,
51. Iranian media say two of them will step aside later in favor of whoever
appears to have the best chance of winning the election.
Velayati is another top
adviser to Khamenei on international affairs. He served as foreign minister
during the 1980-88 war with Iraq and into the 1990s. He is a physician and runs
a hospital in north Tehran.
Charismatic Tehran Mayor
Ghalibaf is a former commander of the Revolutionary Guards during the Iran-Iraq
War.
Among other candidates
who registered on Friday was reformist Mohammad-Reza Aref,
who served as vice-president under former moderate President Mohammad Khatami.
Khatami, who was
elected in landslide victories in 1997 and 2001, has not made clear whether he
will run this time.
Another prominent
figure Hassan Rowhani,
Iran's former nuclear negotiator and confidant to ex-President Ali Akbar Hashemi
Rafsanjani, also put forward his name.
Rowhani's allies say he
will withdraw his application if Rafsanjani decides to run for president.
Both Rafsanjani and
Khatami, whose moderate candidacies would radically alter the contest, appear
reluctant to stand unless given the nod from Khamenei but neither have ruled
themselves out.
"I will not enter
the field without his consent," Rafsanjani said this week, according to
the Mehr news agency. "If circumstances are such that there will be
conflicts and disputes between me and the leader, we will all lose."
More conservatives than
reformists have put themselves forward as candidates, reports say.
The Guardian Council
decides who can stand.
In 2009, 475 hopefuls
registered as candidates, but the Guardian Council, whose 12 members are either
directly or indirectly appointed by Khamenei, only gave its approval to four.
The final list of
candidates will be unveiled later this month, around May 23.
"The
rules set for the election excludes many who might have been able to stand under
normal circumstances. The entire opposition, ranging from Communists to
monarchists and passing by nationalists and liberals, are branded as 'enemies'
and excluded," Amir
Taheri writes today in his weekly
column for the Saudi daily Asharq Alawsat.
Taheri, who was
executive editor-in-chief of Kayhan daily in Tehran from 1972 to 1979,
authored 11 books and was named International Journalist of the Year by the
British Society of Editors and the Foreign Press Association in the annual 2102
British Media Awards, writes in part:
Half
of the population -- women -- is barred from running. Only men can register as
candidates.
Although
legally recognized as religious minorities, Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians
-- altogether numbering around one million altogether -- are also excluded. So
are 300,000 from the Baha’i Faith, on
grounds of belonging to an
"illegal" religious minority.
Being
Muslim is not enough to make you eligible to run for president. Iranian Sunni
Muslims, believed to number around 12 million, are barred from running.
“The
would-be candidates must be Shiite Muslims,” the Interior Ministry declares.
Not
all Shiite denominations are accepted. The “Seveners” or Ismailis are excluded, as are
Zaidis, not to mention smaller
esoteric offshoots of Shiism.
However,
being a “Twelver”
(Ithna’ashari) is not enough either. The candidate must be a political or religious figure
and believe in the core tenets of the Islamic Republic. This means, for instance, a
businessman, an opera singer or a taxi driver, cannot seek the presidency.
Clearly,
such conditions would give the authorities ample opportunity to block the
candidacy of figures considered a threat to Khamenei.
This
is not about electing a president in the normal sense of the term. It is about
choosing a “yes-man” for the “Supreme Guide...”
