TEHRAN – The Guardian Council on Tuesday announced that it has endorsed the qualification of another 251 candidates for parliamentary elections, bringing to 831 the number of hopefuls requalified so far.

The Guardian Council, which has the final say on the vetting, had already allowed some 580 candidates who were originally banned from polls to stand for the March 14 election.
Council spokesman Abbas-Ali Kadkhodaii said, “During three stages, the Guardian Council has reinstated 813 candidates who had either not been qualified or their qualifications were not confirmed.”
Kadkhodaii said those reinstated were from different political camps.
This process will continue for several weeks and the final list of approved candidates will be announced on March 5.
The reinstated hopefuls had been disqualified in the first stage of the vetting process by either Interior Ministry executive committees or the Guardians Council supervisory committees.
UFF platform should address people’s needs
Ali Larijani, the parliamentary candidate and the Leader’s representative to the Supreme National Security Council, said on Tuesday that the United Fundamentalist Front platform should address the people’s current needs.
Plans should be drawn in a manner that people find them effective in improving the current situation, he told reporters on the sidelines of a memorial ceremony held for Ayatollah Mohammad Reza Tavassoli, an Expediency Council member who died on Sunday of a heart attack.
Making a reference to Supreme Leader’s recent remarks, Larijani insisted that revolution’s loyalists should put aside their slight disagreements in the run-up to parliamentary elections.
Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has called on all loyalists to the Islamic Revolution to maintain unity and to ignore minor and unimportant differences.
Karrubi: Reinstatements satisfying, but not enough
Former Majlis speaker Mehdi Karrubi, who had also attended the same ceremony, told reporters that the number of endorsed candidates is satisfactory, but not enough yet.
Disqualifications were really extensive in the initial vetting by the executive and supervisory committees, he said, adding that fortunately later examinations led into the return of some candidates.
Prominent reformers haven’t been reinstated
“I will elaborate on reasons behind my withdrawal after the election,” former first vice president Mohammad-Reza Aref said on Tuesday.
Aref was to lead the reformists’ slate, but withdrew his candidacy.
Prominent reformist figures have yet to be reinstated, Aref told reporters at the same memorial ceremony for Ayatollah Tavassoli.
If influential figures who had a good chance of being elected were reinstated, it could have created a better competitive atmosphere, but so far only those candidates who cannot change the results of the election have been allowed to run.
Only three or four out of a recently endorsed candidates are from the reformist faction, he complained.
He also expressed hope that the GC would not postpone qualifying some hopefuls until the last days, so that they could have enough time for campaigning.
Vote not competitive yet
During the same occasion, Rasoul Montajabnia, the deputy secretary general of the National Confidence Party (NCP), said, “I still feel that the election will not be competitive.”
Those who have been allowed to run do not have the needed charisma to create such an atmosphere, he explained.
Prominent parliamentary candidates should be returned to the race, Montajabnia insisted.
Currently, NCP can only contest about one third of the parliament seats as the credentials of only 102 NCP nominees have been approved so far, he pointed out.
Reformist coalition to hold congress
Hedayat Aghaei from of reformist coalition told the Mehr on Tuesday that the faction is going to hold a congress in Tehran in early March.
All pro-reform groups and movements from the Tehran constituency will attend the gathering.
So far, less than ten reformist candidates in Tehran have been qualified, and the coalition is looking for positive changes