Iran’s supreme leader has requested (better say ordered) the Guardians Council to revise the decision on sacking reformist candidate Mosfata Moeen from presidential candidacy. You can read excellent account by Shahram Kholdi here that contains translation of official letters. How come the leader became so open minded out of the blue? And why he did not ask the council to revise the thing before the announcement? Some say because there were treats for demonstrations by students (They knew this even before!). I believe his request is to hit many targets by one arrow and mainly:
Having Moeen back can breach technocrats/reformists who may vote for Rafsanjan in Moeen’s absence.
The letter may look in favor of Moeen but in fact it is somehow against him. Reformists have been always criticizing the way supreme leader orders others and announced before that this is not a democratic way of ruling. Getting things done upon direct order of the leader has been a way for conservatives to overrule the democratic needs (The major incident happened years ago when the sixth parliament-which was reformist- was trying to change press law to a more democratic version but was ordered to stop by a same kind of letter from the leader). When bloggers met Moeein last month, he was obviously detesting this way of “ordering” and said he will not be accepting such if he gets elected. Now he is in a big challenge, if he runs as a candidate he is obviously endorsing a non-democratic game that he has theoretically been condemning and if he does not, nothing comes out. Conservatives are targeting theoretical backbone of his campaign now!
Apart from that, the funny thing is that it is the same every where here, if you want to get a simple thing done in a government building and even if you pursue all legal actions according to written procedures, sometimes you need a friends or relative there or some one you can bribe to get what you want. We can call it fractal corruption!
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