LEAD: Report: Ahmadinejad wing seeks advantage as candidates mooted

Jan 10, 2012, 17:16 GMT

Tehran - Registration efforts by various Iranian factions for March's parliamentary elections show that a wing allied to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is seeking to stake a claim for itself, separate from rival conservatives.

Fars news agency reported Tuesday that the pro-Ahmadinejad wing - branded by the conservatives and clergy circles as the 'deviant current,' due to its alleged efforts to adopt a nationalistic, rather than Islamic, approach in running the country - is marshaling funds to help it make an impact on March 2.

Ahmadinejad himself had termed his faction as the 'third wave,' which follows a different course from the conservatives and reformists who have ruled Iran's political scene in the last three decades.

While referring to the Ahmadinejad wing, Fars news agency said in an exclusive report that the 'deviant current' has for quite a while held regular sessions and has meticulous plans for its election campaign and getting a parliamentary majority.

According to Fars, the conservatives will run 1,801 candidates, compared to 1,295 for the reformists and 442 from Ahmadinejad's wing. The political stance of a further 1,800 candidates is unclear.

Fars did not say where the news agency obtained its exclusive statistics about the political stance of the candidates.

Although the number of candidates in the Ahmadinejad wing is lower than the two other factions, it is reported to enjoy more financing than the other two parties combined.

Due to their close links to the country's clergy, the conservative faction, led by parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani, and with a current majority in parliament, are still favoured to win the election.

The reformists, who back former president Mohammad Khatami, are branded as a 'conspiracy current' by the conservatives due to members' direct involvement in the street protests following the controversial 2009 presidential election.

That election was overshadowed by fraud charges when reformists refused to acknowledge the re-election of Ahmadinejad. Several reformist leaders were arrested after the election, some of whom are still in jail.

Most of the reformist candidates are expected to be rejected from running in the March elections as their platforms run counter to prevailing government views. The two main opposition leaders, Mir Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karrubi, have been under house arrest since February.

State media reported earlier Tuesday that Iran has started sorting through the names of candidates who have registered to contest Iran's March parliamentary election, with several of them having already been rejected by the Interior Ministry.

Almost 5,400 candidates registered last month to compete for the 290 seats that will be contested in the March 2 parliamentary elections, including more than 1,000 candidates for at least 30 seats in the capital, Tehran - politically, the most important district.

There had been a plan to increase the number of the seats, but parliament has not yet approved and finalized the plan. According to the Interior Ministry, out of the 1,066 registered candidates for Tehran, 319 have either withdrawn their candidacy or been rejected by the ministry.

The ministry gave no further details, but, according to some local press sources, some of the candidates were rejected due to their opposition to President Ahmadinejad.

'It seems the main criterion for confirmation of the candidates was their support for the government, and anybody critical towards the government has been rejected,' said Dariush Qanbari, a lawmaker whose candidacy for another four-year legislation term was rejected.

Qanbari told the labour news agency ILNA that he had no idea upon which law his candidacy had been rejected.

Another lawmaker, Qodratollah Alikhani, told ILNA that his candidacy also seemed to have been rejected. He said it was likely for the same reasons cited by Qanbari.

'The election headquarters (in the Interior Ministry and the Tehran governor's office) belong to the government and it seems that all critics of the government have been rejected,' Alikhani said.

'But this was not unexpected, as eventually, this government simply doesn't want us (critics),' the cleric added.

According to unconfirmed reports, several other lawmakers also critical of Ahmadinejad and his government have been rejected.

The Interior Ministry has not yet disclosed the names of the rejected candidates.

Under Iran's constitution, the conservative Guardian Council - an ideological watchdog of six clerics and six lawyers - also has to check the candidates' loyalty to the country's Islamic system before approving them.