Karoubi Too Says No to the Next Parliamentary Elections

Mehdi Karoubi, a leader of Iran’s protest movement which sprung after the tenth presidential elections in 2009, announced that the Islamic republic of Iran intends to organize an orchestrated and dictated parliamentary elections in March 2012. According to him, state authorities planned to reject some candidates, annul certain ballot districts, fill the empty ballot boxes with nameless votes, and then launch their crusade with arrests and the creation of a terror and police atmosphere over the country, which would be a repeat of what they did in 2009.

Karoubi presented his views regarding the forthcoming March 2 parliamentary elections to his wife during their weekly meeting. His comments were published Saham News website which posts his views and those of his close advisors.

Karoubi’s prediction that the parliamentary elections would be “dictated and security driven’ comes as he ends his 300^th day under house arrest. Karoubi along with Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who was a presidential contender himself, is a leader of the protest movement against the 2009 presidential elections which was born over two years ago and is commonly known as the Green Movement.

Demonstrations in support of these two personalities on February 14 of this year brought forth a violent response by the state security and police forces, and resulted in the house-imprisonment of the two leaders. Since then, there has been minimal contact between each of them and the outside world, dotted by occasional visits by close family relatives.

Prior to Karoubi’s announcement on non-participation in the forthcoming Majlis elections, other reform personalities from the reformist camp and the Green Movement such as the Coordinating Council of the Reform Front, the Coordinating Council of the Green Path, the Participation Front of Islamic Iran, the Organization for the Mujahedin of the Islamic Revolution, and former president Mohammad Khatami had also announced that they would not participate in the March voting.

Through the only published remarks attributed to Mousavi on the subject, he too has expressed disappointment and despair over the absence of the necessary conditions for participating in the elections.

Kalameh website which posts Mousavi’s views reported on Wednesday that during a visit with his three daughters Mousavi said that, “with the continuation of the current conditions, there is no prospect in participating in the elections.”

Through a statement published on December 24^th, the external branch of the Organization for the Mujahedin of the Islamic Revolution mentioned the house-imprisonment of the leaders of the Green Movement and the lack of freedom of political parties and the media, and called on the public not to register as candidates in the “pseudo dictatorial elections.”

The day before the announcement, the Majlis alumni association outside the country had also asked the public not to participate in the March elections citing the absence of the minimum conditions that had been outlined by Khatami as pre-requisites for public participation in the elections. He had earlier specified these minimum conditions to be release of all political prisoners, an open, healthy and secure political atmosphere in the country.