GOVERNMENT BILL TO REFORM ELECTORAL LAWS REJECTED
TEHRAN, 2 Apr. (IPS) As expected, the conservatives-controlled Council of the Guardians (CG) rejected Wednesday a government draft aimed at reforming the electoral laws.
The bill, presented by the embattled President Mohammad Khatami to the reformist-dominated Majles last September and approved by the unicameral parliament last month aimed at curtailing some of key and most controversial powers of the CG, particularly the one that allows the 12 Guardians to vet all candidates running in any elections in the Islamic Republic.
The Guardians ruled that the bill contradicts on several points both the Constitution and the Shari’a, or Islamic Canons, particularly scrapping conditions that demands candidates confirms firm allegiances to Islam, the "sacred" system of the Islamic Republic and above all, the "progressive" principle of velayate faqih, the basic concept on which is based the present Iranian regime.
The council said that after "long deliberations," it found the reform bill to contain 39 items that contravene the constitution and seven that conflict with Islam and demanded that Majles revise the legislation.
Reformist supporters of the President accuse the Council of abusing its powers to disqualify candidates it does not consider as fit to seat in various institutions of the regime, like the Majles or the Assembly of Experts, the only body that can remove the leader, but is controlled by him.
In the event that the Majles rejects the CG’s demand for revising the bill, the dispute would have to go to the Assembly for Discerning the Interests of the State (ADIS, or Expediency Council), which is also controlled by the conservatives and led by former president Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani usually confirms the Guardians decision.
Some reformists lawmakers have threatened they would not accept the difference be referred to the Expediency Council for arbitration and call for a referendum. But the problem is that this demand must be approved by Ayatollah Ali Khameneh’I, the present leader of the Islamic Republic.
Government had also submitted the parliament another bill to confirm some of the president’s prerogatives, including the one that give him the right to supervise the implementation of the Constitution, a right contested by both the Guardians and the Judiciary, which is also controlled directly Mr. Khameneh’i. ENDS REFORM BILL REJECTED 2403