By: Kayhan Int’l Staff Writer

 

Lively discussions, debates, and interviews have started in Iran and are being broadcast by the media to acquaint people all over the country, especially eligible voters, to enable them to vote for the candidate of their choice from among the 6 deserving persons cleared by the Guardian Council for the president’s post.

The nation is sure to elect the most worthy of the lot to succeed Martyr Ayatollah Seyyed Ibrahim Raisi – hopefully as the next “People’s President” that the late incumbent definitely was.  

Of the more than two hundred persons who approached the Ministry of Interior as aspirants for the post of the Chief Executive 80 were registered as qualified candidates in accordance with the clauses of the constitution on the basis of their record of loyalty to the nation, devotion to Islam, awareness of national, regional, and international issues, soundness of character, and resolve to continue the progress and development of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

As in all healthy competitions, it was but natural to narrow the field to a few most creditable ones after almost a week of thoroughly checking the files and debating their past performance by the 12-member Guardian Council which is made up 6 leading Islamic jurisprudents and 6 civil jurists.

This vital evaluation process, however, does not mean the other 74 upright aspirants for the 14th presidential elections were found to be deficient, or were rejected and disqualified, as the Zionist-controlled western media claims.

This is nothing but falsification of facts since all of them are dedicated servants of the Islamic Republic. 

The key to the popular appeal of the Islamic system of governance of Iran, whose stability, rapid progress, and growing regional and international influence has defeated the enemies’ plot to drive a wedge between state and religion through sanctions, wars, terrorism, and hiring of traitors to run websites and radio-TV channels that blare poisonous propaganda, besides abortive attempts to incite lawless and irreligious elements to violence, is the soundness of the constitutional bodies that ensure the smooth functioning of the country, even in case of untoward incidents, such as last month’s copter crash that led to President Raisi’s death.

Unlike many countries that claim to be democracies, the Islamic Republic has never declared state of emergency throughout the past 45 years as a pretext to suspend constitutional rights and civil liberties. 

This is evident not just by the current vacuum resulting from President Raisi’s tragic loss of life a year before completion of his admirable term but also in the 1980s during the 8-year war imposed by the US through Saddam when a president was impeached was being turncoat and fled the country to avoid punishment and the next elected one was martyred, along with the prime minister, in an American-hatched MKO terrorist bomb blast.

The security of the country and the people is indeed indebted to the well-drafted crisis-resistant constitution and its various bodies which ensured smooth transfer of leadership to the then President Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei in 1989 on the passing away of the Father of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khomeini (AS).

Iran is indeed proud to have a near perfect governing system in contrast to the decayed and depraved liberal democracies of the West, where felons, criminals, murderers, fraudsters, debauchees, and the Godless, are elected as presidents, prime ministers, parliamentarians, and the like, to the detriment of the people.

And also of the outside world, where entire populations are subjected to mass massacres on the orders of US president – e.g. Japan and Germany in 1945, Korea in the 1950s, Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970, Afghanistan and Iraq at the turn of the 21st century, and now Gaza in occupied Palestine where Genocidal Joe or Biden the Butcher is directing the Zionist holocaust which in 8 months has killed 37,000 people and seriously injured 80,000 others (most of them maimed for life).