The exclusion of two prominent reformist candidates from running in upcoming presidential elections came as no surprise to many analysts in Tehran who added they believe the move was a face-saving one to the reformist hawks.
"I don't believe it would have any impact on the masses," political analyst and columnist Mohammad Sadeq Al Hussaini told Gulf News in response to a question on the reformists' call to boycott the June 17 elections after the exclusion.
Al Hussaini added many reformists were tend to boycott the elections out of frustration because many of their expectations from the reformist president Mohammad Khatami were not met.
"There are those who say here in Tehran that the Guardian Council has saved the faces of the reformists or the hawks of reformists, and left them outside the electoral game before they enter it and come out with small number of votes that would expose their already frustrated masses," he added.
The Guardian Council, an unelected body that vets the election candidates, has rejected on Sunday all the reformists who registered to run in next month's presidential elections. Only six out of more than 1,000 hopeful candidates were approved.
Accordingly, Mustafa Mo'en the candidate of the major political party, Islamic Iran participation Front (IIPF), and Vice president Mohsen Mehralizadeh, were among excluded.
Khamenei made the statement after parliamentary speaker Golam Ali Haddad Adel, also a hard-liner, called on the Ayatollah to intervene in the growing dispute over the disqualification of Mo'en and Mehralizadeh, to encourage more Iranians to vote on June 17.
Mo'en said he would not vote in the elections and called his disqualification "illegal, unfair and illogical."
"I won't vote in the election," Mo'en, a former culture minister, told reporters yesterday.
Sae'ed Shariati, leader of Mo'en's party the largest reform party stopped short of announcing a boycott, but said his Islamic Iran Participation Front party "won't participate in a sham election where the outcome has already been decided by hardliners."
However, boycotting call would not have a great impact on Iranians, believed analysts. "There are small parties, but no main party or major [political] stream is calling for boycotting," said Musaib Al Nuaimi, Editor-in-Chief of Arabic-language Iranian newspaper Al Wefaq.
If Mo'en's application was approved, "it was expected that he will get out of the race in favour of Dr. Karroubi", said Al Nuaimi in reference to the approved reformist candidate. "One of the two would have stayed."
Karroubi is the only reformist candidate, while the former president Hashemi Rafsanjani is categorised in between moderates and conservatives.
Gulf News
