Bush: Iran election designed to keep rulers in power
On the eve of Iran’s presidential election, US President George Bush said the voting has been designed to keep power in the hands of a few rulers “through an electoral process that ignores the basic requirements of democracy".
“Iran is ruled by men who suppress liberty at home and spread terror across the world,” Bush said. “Power is in the hands of an unelected few who have retained power through an electoral process that ignores the basic requirements of democracy. The June 17 presidential elections are sadly consistent with this oppressive record.”
Tomorrow’s election will choose a successor to President Mohammad Khatami, who came to power in 1997 and is barred by law from seeking a third term.
The hard-line ruling clerics loyal to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are hoping the vote will consolidate their power. The Guardian Council, a watchdog for Iran’s theocratic constitution, initially barred reformers from running. But Khamenei, who has the final say on all state matters, forced the council to reverse that decision.
He apparently was worried that low turnout could undermine the ruling Islamic establishment and weaken its position in crucial negotiations with Europeans over Iran’s nuclear programme and embolden the US, whose forces are stationed in Iraq, which borders Iran.
Bush said Iran’s rulers denied more than a thousand people who put themselves forward as candidates, including popular reformers and women.
At least two of the candidates in tomorrow’s polls have promised to improve Iran’s relations with the United States, which cut relations after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. They are: front-runner Hashemi Rafsanjani and the reformist former Cabinet Minister Mostafa Moin.
The US claims Iran is secretly working on a nuclear weapons programme in tandem with its first energy-producing reactor, scheduled to begin service early next year. Iran denies that and has ongoing contact with European envoys to end the impasse.
Bush said Iranians are heirs to a great civilisation and deserve a government that honours their ideals with a free press and economy, freedom of religion and assembly and an independent judiciary.
“Today, the Iranian regime denies all these rights,” Bush said. “It brutalises its people and denies them their liberty.
“The Iranian people deserve a genuinely democratic system in which elections are honest – and in which their leaders answer to them instead of the other way around,” he said.
“And to the Iranian people, I say: As you stand for your own liberty, the people of America stand with you,” Bush said.
