Nobel peace prizewinner Shirin Ebadi said Tuesday she would not vote in Iran’s parliamentary election this week because of the mass disqualification of reformist candidates. "I will not vote myself because I don’t know those who have been qualified. I’m not ready to vote for someone I don’t know," the human rights lawyer said in an interview with Reuters. "The first principle of democracy is that people should have the right to vote for anyone they want," she said, adding that the exclusion of some 2,500 contenders by a panel of hard-line clerics had "damaged people’s freedom to vote." Her statement, just 48 hours before the elections, intensified the standoff that has been building between reformist supporters of President Mohammad Karensky Khatami and their hardline opponents since January, when a watchdog council rejected liberal candidates... The reference was to the Guardian Council, which has disqualified over 2,000 candidates. The letter also implied that Khamenei, despite his public statements, had approved the disqualifications.
Checkmate |