Rohani calls for more electoral "competition" after vetoing leading candidates

Iranian President Hasan Rohani on Wednesday called for more "competition" in June's presidential elections to make them "real", following a veto of leading reformist and moderate candidates.

"The soul of the elections is competition. If you take away this soul, it becomes a corpse. The principle is that there should be intense competition for real elections to take place," the president stressed during the weekly cabinet meeting.

Rohani explained that he wanted the Guardian Council, the body charged with accepting or vetoing candidates, to "have more time to bring in other people" and that he has consulted on this.

"I wrote a letter to the supreme leader (Ali Khamenei) about the Guardian Council's decision to convey my opinion (...) I asked the leader to intervene if he sees fit," he said.

Only seven of the 592 people who registered made it through the Guardian Council's filter, which rejected the candidacy of leading figures such as former parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani and current first vice-president Eshaq Yahanguiri.

The official list released yesterday by the Interior Ministry shows that the conservatives are in the lead ahead of the 18 June elections, with the head of the judiciary, the cleric Ebrahim Raisi, at the head of the list.

The only approved candidates who can be considered representatives of the reformist or moderate sector are Central Bank governor Abdolnaser Hematí and former vice-president Mohsen Mehralizadeh, but they have a low profile."Elections in the country guarantee the legitimacy of the system, but we have forgotten that. All the decisions that are made have no legitimacy without the support of the people," Rohani said.

Among those disqualified, Larijani diplomatically accepted the Guardian Council's decision and urged a large turnout in the elections, which is feared to be low.

Yahanguiri also called for a vote, but warned that the vetoing of many eligible people is "a serious threat" to popular participation and competition from all political currents, particularly the reformist camp.

"The (Guardian) Council bears the responsibility for the decision and the political and social consequences of it," he said in a statement last night.

Another major candidate rejected is the ultra-conservative former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was vetoed in the 2017 presidential election and called yesterday's decision an "unjust act" in a statement.

Ahmadinejad denounced pressure to resign himself to the veto and remain silent, which he does not intend to do, and assured that in the current situation the turnout will be low and "there will be widespread national and international repercussions".
"We are going to fall and we will not be able to get up again", said the former president, who asserted that those responsible for the current crisis are "both the government and the system" as a whole, and that social discontent and international pressure against Iran will increase.