More than 40% of the Iranian parliament resigned today in a dramatic gesture intended to force the clerical hierarchy to reinstate thousands of liberal candidates disqualified from the coming elections.
The mass resignation “will determine Iran’s direction: rule of absolute dictatorship or democracy,” reformist lawmaker Mohammad Kianoush-Rad told The Associated Press.
Speaker Mahdi Karroubi, who took the yellow resignation papers from the 124 legislators, appealed to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to intervene to resolve the crisis.
But Khamenei left the capital Tehran for an undisclosed location, making it difficult to reach him, parliamentary officials said.
Speaker Karroubi made a rare attack on the Guardian Council, the unelected body of hard-line clerics that disqualified more than 2,400 reformist candidates from the legislative elections due on February 20.
“Are you loyal to Islam if you pray daily, but then trample on the rights of the people?” said Karroubi, himself a cleric.
Karroubi accused the Guardian Council of “disrespecting democratic values and having no faith in a popular vote”.
Reformists say the council disqualified liberal candidates in order to fix the election in favour of conservatives. The council denies political motives and argues the disqualified lacked the criteria to stand. But more than 80 of the disqualified were elected in the 2000 elections. Today they resigned.
“An election whose result is clear beforehand is a treason to the rights and ideals of the nation,” one of the resigning legislators, Rajab Ali Mazrouei, told the parliament.
The leader of the biggest reform party in parliament, Mohammad Reza Khatami, resigned and accused the Guardian Council of killing all opportunities for resolving the dispute.
“There is no hope for a solution. We will not participate in this sham election. Even if all those disqualified are reinstated today, there will be no time for competition. Elections on February 20 are illegitimate,” said Reza Khatami, a younger brother of President Mohammad Khatami and a deputy speaker.
Karroubi said he and President Khatami had began “new efforts” to resolve the crisis, holding discussions with supreme leader Khamenei, who has the final say on all state matters.
Khatami had called an emergency Cabinet meeting to discuss the dispute yesterday, but was forced to postpone it when he suffered an attack of severe back pain. Doctors confined him to his house on Saturday afternoon.
Earlier, Khatami had suggested his government would call off the elections.
“My government will only hold competitive and free elections ... the parliament must represent the views of the majority and include all (political) tendencies,” Khatami told reporters yesterday.
Many hard-line legislators did not attend today’s session, apparently hoping to deny it a quorum. But the quorum of 194 of the 290 seats was reached. About 70 legislators attended but did not resign. They were independents or reformists who have not yet decided on resignation.
Karroubi said each resignation would be considered and put to the vote in future sessions, but he did not say how long the process would take.
A reformist legislator who resigned, Mohsen Mirdamadi, said that if hard-liners tried to hold the elections without government support, it would be “a full-fledged coup with the help of military forces”.
The furore began in early January when the Guardian Council, whose 12 members are appointed by Khamenei, disqualified more than 3,600 of the 8,200 people who filed papers to run in the polls. After protests, and an opinion from Khamenei, the council restored 1,160 low-profile candidates to the list on Friday.
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