WUNRN
IRAN APPROVES MEN PRESIDENT
CANDIDATES BUT BARS ALL WOMEN
Iran has barred women candidates
from the race for the country's presidency but has
granted permission to the four main
contenders for the June vote.
Foreign Staff
20 May 2009
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is seeking re-election but will have to overcome challenges from ex- premier Mirhossein Mousavi and former parliament speaker Mehdi Karoubi and the former head of Iran's elite Rolutionary Guards Mohsen Rezai.
The Islamic Republic decrees that all candidates for high office must be sanctioned by a Guardian Council, which screened for allegiance to Iran's Islamic system and "absolute obedience" to the country's top authority Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Over
450 hopefuls had registered out of which 42 were women. No women passed the
test to stand in the election.
Reformists believe a high turnout would give them a better chance to win the vote. But they claim state media have not given sufficient coverage of the election to mobilise Iranian voters.
President Ahmadinejad's rivals have criticised the coverage of the president's travels around Iran. The opposition said the trips, before the authorised period of campaigning are illegal and should be stopped. The government has refused to halt the trips. State radio and television deny being partial.
Some 46 million Iranians aged 18 years and older are eligible to vote in the polls, Iran's tenth presidential election since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
The president regularly rails against the West and vows a return to Islamic revolutionary values. Ayatollah Khamenei has urged Iranians to support anti-Western candidates.
The three other candidates have said Iran needed to have interaction and "policy of detente" with the West, at odds with the Islamic state over its nuclear programme.
President Ahmadinejad came to power in 2005 vowing to share out oil wealth more fairly but critics blame him for disappointing economic growth and high inflation. However, his promises of a fairer redistribution of income still resonates with the poor.
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