Guardians Council: We Will Disqualify

The anniversary of the founding of the Guardians Council of the Constitution (commonly known as the Guardians Council) institution turned into an excuse for government media in Iran to quote a number of current members of the Majlis and the Assembly of Experts on Leadership praising the work of the Council and at the same time call for a wide disqualification of those who had “fallen out with the revolution”.

Fars news agency, closely affiliated to the security-military establishment, was among those media outlets which through interviews with various right-wing personalities called on the disqualification of candidates for the Majlis who opposed the supreme leader and asked the Guardians Council – which vets presidential and Majlis candidates – to “protect the vote of the people.”

Ayatollah Namazi, the representative of the supreme leader and Friday prayer leader for Kashan told Fars, “If there was no Guardians Council to monitor the elections and protect people’s votes, people would become apathetic because they would then feel there was no place to protect their votes. The presence and involvement of the GC is the cause for people to feel satisfied.”

Mousavi Ghazanfarabadi, the Majlis representative from Bam was another MP who spoke on the subject and said, “It was really God’s kindness to instill the Guardians Council in the constitution so that outsiders could not enter the body of the revolution.” In his interview, he also said that there had been times that the GC had faulted “in the sense that the complexity of the enemy’s plans had resulted in its approval of certain candidates during the elections for the sixth Majlis (held on March 14, 2008) and the tenth presidential election (held on June 12, 2009).” Both references are to reformist candidates who were qualified by the GC as candidates, Mir-Hossein Mousavi is an example of a qualified presidential candidate for the tenth presidential election.

“The GC should have disqualified some candidates that it had approved and who had risen to government positions, as these individuals had be led astray by those around them, despite the GC’s supervision.” he further said. “Seditionists continued to try to infiltrate the regime red lines and harm the revolution of the Iranian nation but they have failed to accomplish this through the kindness of God and will continue to fail in the future,” he opined.

Another Majlis representative Salman Zaker also told Fars, “The presence of the GC has prevented the infiltration of outsiders into the monitoring and executive institutions of the regime and I hope this trend continues.” He called the mechanism through which members were selected to serve on the GC (six of its twelve members are appointed directly by the supreme leader while the other six are nominated by the Judiciary and appointed by the Majlis) an example of “religious democracy.” “The GC vets candidates to sensitive posts in the Islamic republic and then qualifies them to public vote, which is what the ayatollah Khomeini and the current supreme leader have had in mind as religious democracy,” he said.

Abbasali Kadkhodai, the spokesperson for the GC also spoke to the media about the achievements of the Council and said, “GC’s involvement has played an important role in protecting the constitution, the Islamic regime and institutions such as the Majlis.”

On the anniversary of its establishment last week, the GC issued a statement in which it vows to protect the revolution and the republic and bar those it called counter-revolutionaries and “impure thinkers” from hurting the Islamic republic.

Source: Rooz Online