Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (right) and presidential candidate Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie flashing the victory sign after Mashaie registered his candidacy at the Interior Ministry yesterday.
TEHRAN: Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yesterday contested the disqualification of a close aide from next month’s presidential election by a conservative body that also dismissed moderate Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, leaving a field dominated by candidates close to Tehran’s ruling clerics.
The Guardians Council on Tuesday eliminated both the aide, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie, and ex-president Rafsanjani from a list of candidates for the June 14 election, without giving an explanation.
But President Ahmadinejad, who himself cannot stand for a third consecutive term, said he would take up the disqualification with supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say in all national affairs.
“I will pursue this case through the supreme leader until the last moment and I hope this problem will be solved,” he said on the president’s office website, adding his man Mashaie had been “a victim of injustice”.
Khamenei has the power to ask the council to review such cases, as he did in 2005, resulting in the reinstatement of two reformist candidates.
Rafsanjani’s camp said the ex-president would not challenge his disqualification.
Rafsanjani lost most of his political stock after being defeated by Ahmadinejad in 2009 and then voiced support for reformists who opposed the incumbent’s re-election.
“They called my father and told him to withdraw from the race but my father said he will not withdraw since ‘I cannot betray people who urged me to come forward’,” said his daughter Fatemeh Hashemi Rafsanjani.
However, his name did not appear on the list of approved candidates published later. The 12-member Guardians Council, without naming the 78-year-old Rafsanjani, said frailty and old age had been factors in the disqualifications, a comment ridiculed by his daughter.
Ahmadinejad’s re-election sparked massive street protests, leading to a heavy-handed regime crackdown and the arrest of hundreds of journalists, activists and reformist supporters who alleged fraud. His 2009 challengers Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi have been held under house arrest since the protests, one of the worst political crises in Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution. AFP
