Iran hardliners revoke a third of poll bans
By Parinoosh Arami
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's hardline Guardian Council on Friday lifted bans on only a third of the candidates it barred from next month's parliamentary polls and refused demands to postpone an election some reformists are calling a sham.
The council's decision could help split the reformist camp and still not give President Mohammad Khatami's allies enough candidates to be able to win another majority in the assembly.
The 12-man conservative watchdog had banned almost half of the 8,200 hopefuls for the February 20 vote, most of them Khatami allies and 80 of them deputies in the 290-seat parliament.
"More than 1,160 were reinstated," said a Guardian Council statement read out on state television. Some 3,300 out of 3,600 candidates banned by the council had appealed the decision.
Parliamentarian Ali Tajernia said none of the well known liberal firebrands had been cleared to run. "Those who have been approved are those who will not aid a competitive election," he told Reuters.
Reformist deputies have kept up a nearly three-week sit-in protest at parliament, cabinet ministers, vice-presidents and provincial governors have threatened to resign en masse and the Interior Ministry called for the polls to be postponed.
But the unelected council's six clerics and six Islamic lawyers were unmoved.
"The issue of postponement was discussed and was not agreed," Guardian Council chief Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati wrote on the watchdog's Web site.
Many reformists say they will settle for nothing less than the re-instatement of all candidates, but the moderate Khatami who has always stepped back from confrontation with the powerful conservatives, said he still believed compromise was possible.
Influential former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani called for a quick end to the dispute to stop enemies such as the United States making political capital out of it.
"If we hold a successful election with a large turnout they will be disappointed and step back," he told worshippers at Friday prayers, broadcast live on state radio.
But analysts say the hardliners are unconcerned about international opinion as they move to convert their implicit control of the levers of power in Iran to explicit rule.
The Guardian Council has vetoed most of Khatami's reforms passed by his supporters in parliament, while the conservative judiciary has jailed dozens of dissidents and shut down scores of liberal publications.
Students, a powerful political force in a country two-thirds of people are under 30 years-old and the minimum voting age is 15, have kept out of the fray wary of again being drawn into street protests only to be left high and dry by top reformers.
The public also has appeared largely unimpressed by the row, disenchanted by years of broken promises by reformers seemingly unable to bring about social and economic change.
Turnout in local council elections last year was down to as low as 15 percent in major cities and analysts say may not creep much higher in next month's polls either.
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