TEHRAN -- Tehran Governor General Kamran Daneshju said, “Local council elections is considered as a social process and people should not regard it as a political issue.”

“Political affairs did not influence the qualification or disqualification of any candidates,” he told the Mehr News Agency.

About 2000 of the registered candidates were disqualified mostly due to their incompetence, corruption, and failure in their previous posts, he added.

ILP in “great coalition of reformists”

Soheila Jelodarzadeh of the Islamic Labor Party (ILP) said, “There has been a serious effort to harmonize all the reformists’ lists of candidates, and the reformists will run for the local council elections with a single list.”

ILP is a member of the “great coalition of reformists”, the former MP told the Mehr News Agency.

Not all reformists in consensus

However, Hamid Qazvini, the spokesman of the Followers of the Imam's Line Society said, “The so-called reformists’ list of candidates is not agreed by all reformists.”

“Four groups in the reformists’ coalition headquarters were the major decision makers,” Qazvini told MNA.

“The groups consider themselves as the godfathers of the reforms and with their guardian-like behavior they do not allow others to join the reformist camp, he stated.

The groups do not say “coalition and unity with one another” but they rather say “unity with us”, and such viewpoints are in contrast with democracy, he added.

No campaign before Dec. 7

Ali-Asghar Karandish, the head of the Interior Ministry's election headquarters, announced that any kind of campaign for the midterm parliamentary and local council elections is not allowed before December 7.

“If the news conference of Hassan Ghafurifard and Asadollah Badamchian was held as election campaign, it was illegal,” he told MNA.

Ghafurifard and Badamchian pronounce candidacy for Majlis election

Former MP Hassan Ghafurifard and an influential member of the Islamic Coalition Party Asadollah Badamchian held a joint news conference on Saturday and announced their bid to run for the mid-term Majlis elections. The two candidates are supported by the Followers of the Imam and Leadership Front. Ghafurifard said, “If we want to have a developed country, all our programs should be planned with knowledge and vigilance.”

People should take part in the elections with vigilance to help achieve the 20-Year Outlook Plan, he added. Asked why he withdrew from running for the seventh Majlis elections, Badamchian said at that time he registered as a “responsibility”, but he withdrew in order to maintain unity.

“It was the case at that time, and it is the same case now.”