Iran's Shirin Ebadi to boycott a run-off election

[democratic]

http://www.iranmania.com/News/ArticleView/Default.asp?NewsCode=32696&NewsKind=Current%20Affairs

LONDON, June 19 (IranMania) - Iranian human rights lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi said Sunday she will boycott a run-off vote for Iran's presidency, arguing that the electoral process is fundamentally flawed.

"As long as there is this supervisory law on elections I will not take part in any election," Ebadi told AFP, referring to the power of unelected hardliners to choose who can actually stand for public office.

Ahead of the June 17 presidential election, the Guardians Council -- a hardline non-elected watchdog which screens all candidates -- disqualified more than 1,000 people who had registered to stand for president.

This power was also used to devastating effect prior to the February 2004 parliament elections, when nearly all pro-reform candidates were disqualified and the polls were subsequently won by conservatives and hardliners.

[daleo]

1. Imagine 1000 people on the ballot for president.

No country would have 1000 people on the ballot. The number is a red herring. This "Guardians Council" may be fundamentally undemocratic, but every country has some equivalent. In advanced western democracies it is usually an informal guardians council of rich contributors.

[Warren Stupidity]

2. The election was a foreign policy disaster for the neocons

The reform movement in Iran was destroyed at the polls. It would seem that rather than secular democracy blossoming in the middle east we have destoyed all such movements as they are now tainted with the stain of collaboration with the crusader army occupying Iraq.