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Iranian Female Presidential Candidate Pulls Out
TEHRAN, May 16 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The first woman to register for the presidential elections in Iran has pulled out of the race as Iran's June elections increasingly seems as if it will be a repetition of the 1997 polls, the official IRNA news agency reported on its online website Wednesday.
Farah Khosravi, 47, stepped down before the oversight Guardians Council, which vets hopefuls for elective office, released a list of approved candidates for the June 8th polls.
Khorsavi's withdrawal casts a shadow on the possibility of Iranian women taking pubic office under the gaze of conservative clergy which came to rule the country in 1979.
Western human rights organizations and governments, locked with Tehran in an ideological conflict, have often criticized Iran for an alleged "suppression of women."
Many Western countries have taken issue with the Iranian government over issues such as the hijab, an Islamic dress code that Iranian females are required to adhere to in public, co-education and the right for women to travel alone.
Khosravi said in a statement earlier Wednesday that she was withdrawing from the election "to bolster unity'' among the reformist groups. She said that she was ending her candidacy to "avoid spreading out the votes," IRNA reported.
Khosravi announced earlier this month that President Mohammed Khatami, widely expected to win re-election, had "not kept his promises" and would likely get less than eight million votes, in contrast to the 20 million he won in 1997.
Khatami, 57, won a sweeping victory in the 1997 presidential election and is still the favorite this time around, but his majority could be cut back severely as a result of unrelenting conservative pressure during his first term forcing the delay and stifling of his reform proposals, on which he was elected.
Khatami is to face nine mainly conservative opponents when he runs for a second term on June 8th, the conservative-dominated election oversight body decided Wednesday.
The Council, which ensures candidates hold fast to Iran's Islamic values, is to announce its list before Friday, a day before the election campaign officially begins.
"The definitive list was drawn up after detailed study, taking account of the sensitive situation which the country is currently experiencing," said a statement from the 12-member Guardians Council, which judges whether the candidates conform to the "values" of the Islamic Republic.
To qualify, candidates had to be involved in politics or religion, be of Iranian origin, Muslim and "faithful to the cause of the Islamic Republic.''
The council disqualified 24 other female candidates, along with outspoken reformist Ebrahim Asgharzadeh, who was believed to have been a serious challenge to Khatami.
It had whittled down the list of over 800 people who registered to be candidates to 30, and then later on Wednesday, to only 10 men, including the incumbent, Khatami.
Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani, Iran's Defense Minister, is seen as one of Khatami most serious challengers. Several members of Iran's parliament have protested his candidacy saying that the participation of military candidates in the elections goes "against the Iranian constitution," the Iranian press said.
Iran officially became an Islamic state in 1979 when the monarchy of Shah Reza Pahlavi was overthrown. Afterward, religious clerics took control under the leadership of the late Ayatollah Khomeini.
The only change in the Shiite Muslim country since then has come as liberals and reformists began to ask for a more active social and political role in Iran's daily life.
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