Iran's electoral watchdog to consider banning candidate: report

By Yeganeh Torbati

DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran's electoral watchdog will consider on Monday whether to disqualify a centrist cleric from running for president, just days before Friday's election, Iranian media reported.

The semi-official Mehr news agency, citing an unnamed source, said the Guardian Council would consider barring Hassan Rohani for revealing what it said was classified information on Iran's nuclear program in a televised presidential debate and for some slogans chanted by his supporters during rallies.

Rohani is the most prominent moderate approved to run by the Guardian Council, a vetting body made up of clerics and jurists. The slate of eight candidates is dominated by hardliners and conservatives close to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The Asr Iran newspaper quoted an unnamed source inside the Guardian Council's spokesman's office denying that Rohani's permission to run for election would be reviewed.

Mehr said the Council's spokesman planned to hold a news conference on Monday.

During a live presidential debate on Friday, candidates clashed on Iran's nuclear policy, with nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili criticized by his rivals over the lack of progress in talks with world powers.

Rohani, who was the nuclear negotiator under reformist ex-President Mohammad Khatami, said hardline stances had resulted in several rounds of United Nations sanctions.

"All of our problems stem from this - that we didn't make an utmost effort to prevent the (nuclear) dossier from going to the (U.N.) Security Council," said Rohani, who negotiated a suspension in uranium enrichment with world powers, somewhat easing Western pressure on Tehran.

Enrichment activity resumed after the hardline populist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became president in 2005.

"It is good to have centrifuges running, provided people's lives and livelihoods are also running," Rohani said, referring to Iran's campaign to develop advanced nuclear technology despite its worsening economic problems.

NO PRECEDENT

Nuclear policy, as with most sensitive foreign and domestic issues, is controlled by Khamenei's office rather than the president.

At two rallies held in Tehran this month, Rohani's supporters have chanted slogans calling for the release of political prisoners. Several Rohani staffers and supporters were arrested afterwards.

Opposition leaders Mirhossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi have been held under house arrest for more than two years after disputing the 2009 re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as fraudulent, sparking months of mass protest. Friday's vote is the first presidential election since that unrest.

The Guardian Council had already surprised many Iranians when it banned former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani from running, a move seen as intended to eliminate an independent candidate who could challenge Khamenei's authority.

Rohani's campaign manager said he did not expect the body to ban the candidate.

"We have received no news regarding the Guardian Council's review of Mr. Rohani's qualification up to now and I doubt such a thing is true," Mohammad Reza Nematzadeh was quoted as saying by the ISNA news agency.

Yasmin Alem, a U.S.-based expert on Iran's electoral system, said it would be unusual to bar a candidate who has already been approved to run for office.

"There is no precedent for disqualifying a candidate after his credentials have been approved by the Guardian Council," Alem told Reuters.

"As far as I know, the election law doesn't even stipulate a clause concerning this matter."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/irans-electoral-watchdog-consider-banning-candidate-report-055103706.html

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