Iran allows hardline parliament speaker Mohammad Ghalibaf and 5 others to contest presidential polls

Weeks after erstwhile Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi was killed in a helicopter crash, the country’s Guardian Council has approved the candidature of six people for the upcoming presidential elections. The election which is scheduled to take place on June 28 will see Iran’s hardline parliament speaker contesting as well.

However, the Guardian Council has once again barred the nomination of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The firebrand populist leader is known for the crackdown that followed his disputed 2009 re-election. It is important to note that the Guardian Council which approved the names of the candidates, is a panel of clerics and jurists.

The Council is ultimately overseen by the Iranian Supreme Leader, Ali Hosseini Khamenei. This year as well, the panel continued its streak of not accepting a woman candidate or anyone who called for a radical change in the country’s fabric.

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What does the Iranian presidential campaigning entail? 

The campaigning is likely to include televised debates and the candidates are also allowed to advertise on billboards and offer stump speeches to back their bids.

So far, none of the candidates have offered any specifics however, they have promised a better economic situation for the country as it suffers from sanctions by the US and other Western nations. Despite all these promises, most of the political and economic decisions lie in the hands of the country’s supreme leader.

Who is Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf?

One of the prominent contestants in this year’s election will be hardline parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. He was the former mayor of Tehran and is known for having close ties to the country’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guards.

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In the past, he served as a former Guards general and was part of a violent crackdown on Iranian university students back in 1999. In the past, he has also reportedly ordered live gunfire at the students who were protesting against the regime in 2003. At that time, he was serving as the country’s police chief.

It is interesting to note that Ghalibaf ran unsuccessfully for president in 2005 and 2013. He withdrew from the presidential race of 2017 after he decided to support Raisi in his first presidential bid. Raisi eventually won in 2021, but the presidential election that year had a low voter turnout.

Ahmadinejad gets disqualified

On Sunday, the Guardian Council disqualified Ahmadinejad, the Holocaust-questioning former president of Iran. In the past, Ahmadinejad has increasingly challenged Khamenei, especially towards the end of the term.

He was also disqualified by the panel in the last election. Raisi is the second Iranian president to die in office. In 1981, a bomb blast killed former Iranian President Mohammad Ali Rajai in the chaotic days after the country’s Islamic Revolution.

With inputs from agencies.