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Iran's First Female Candidates Run For Presidency
CAIRO, May 2 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Iran's first female candidates have filed campaign papers at the interior ministry in preparation to run in a presidential election next month, news agencies reported Wednesday.
In all, 67 people came forward Wednesday, the first day of registration, including bureaucrat Farah Khosravi and political unknown Touran Jamili, the first women to seek the presidency since Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution.
Two other female hopefuls needed further documents and were not permitted to file formally, a ministry official said.
Ever since an Islamic state was declared, Western countries have been criticizing Tehran for what Western capitals say is "discrimination against women" in the country.
There was no immediate reaction from human rights or Western countries to the nomination of female presidential candidate in elections slated for June 8th.
The Iranian constitution is vague on the question of whether a woman may be president of the Islamic republic, but Khosravi expressed hope that the Guardians Council would allow her to stand.
"The law is not clear, but I hope the council will accept my candidacy," she told the AFP news agency, adding that her campaign would focus primarily on issues of education and the economy.
The Guardians Council has notoriously disqualified many candidates, allowing only a handful to run for the country's highest offices. Out of 232 who submitted candidacy papers, only four were allowed into the race, including incumbent president Mohammed Khatami.
Khatami kept friends and foes alike guessing Wednesday after he failed to step forward as a candidate for the forthcoming presidential election. Khatami, a reformist cleric, was elected largely on the back of overwhelming support from women and young people.
"Mohammad Khatami has not kept his promises. He has failed to keep his promises to the people, to the young and to the women," said Khosravi, 47, who is running with the Iran-e-farda party, which has close links to the country's dominant conservative bloc.
The president is not "capable of lowering inflation, or checking unemployment," she said. "If he runs, he will not get even eight million votes," in contrast to the 20 million votes he received in 1997, she predicted.
Presidential hopefuls have until Sunday to file with the ministry, and sources close to the 58-year-old cleric said Khatami could announce he will stand for a second four-year term Thursday.
Leaders of his reformist coalition have already announced they will meet Saturday, 24 hours before the deadline, amid mounting calls for the charismatic Khatami to stay the course at the head of the reform movement.
The eyes of the world have been on Khatami since late last year, when he began publicly expressing his frustration over the limited powers of the presidency, which holds no sway over the courts, police or armed forces.
Khatami in October blasted what he called the "sick" campaign against his reform movement, as top aides made it known he might not have the desire for another four years of political combat against his conservative rivals.
His tenure has been haunted by stiff opposition to his reforms from establishment conservatives, including the wholesale closure of newspapers and the arrest of dozens of journalists, Khatami allies and others.
But the Jomhuri Eslami newspaper said Wednesday that he had definitively decided to make a re-election bid after a meeting Sunday with supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose powers dwarf those of the president.
For its part, the Guardian's Council vets those seeking elective office, and has already rejected more than 40% of those hoping to stand for a number of vacant parliamentary seats during by-elections being held the same day as the presidential vote.
BBC's Online service said its Tehran correspondent reported that the ballot will be a contest between reformers and conservative hardliners who control important levers of power, such as the judiciary and the police.
Khatami won a landslide victory against his conservative rival four years ago. The most prominent conservative figure to file Wednesday was Abdullah Jasbi, the chancellor of Islamic Azad, the nation's largest university.
Mohsen Sazgara, a Khatami ally who formerly headed a publishing firm, which put out a number of now-banned reformist newspapers, was the leading pro-reform hopeful to come forward.
The day was not without its lighter moments, as sock salesman and dark-horse candidate Gholamreza Aqaie vowed he had "plenty of ideas" - including making Khatami his vice president if elected.
Khatami swept to office in 1997 with nearly 70% of the popular vote, on the strength of his pledge to institute the rule of law and an ambitious program of liberalizing social and political reforms.
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