TEHRAN, Aug. 06 (MNA) – New spokesperson of the Guardian Council has admitted that buying and selling votes during elections damage the health of elections and should be seriously addressed.
Abbasali Kadkhodaei who was speaking in his press conference on Saturday announced the official acknowledgement of the fact of ‘trading votes’ after Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the Secretary-General of the Council had criticized the general trend earlier last week.
Mr. Kadkhodaei provided an alternative which would greatly prevent trading votes; “registration in advance of the voters across the nation is a plan working well and practiced in other countries; electronic voting is a second solution to rule out such disorders,” he told reporters.
On a question about speculations made by the media that the incumbent president would even be disqualified in the upcoming presidential elections in May 2017, Mr. Kadkhodaei said that the general policy of the Council had been to approve the general and special qualities of the candidates for a single election, implying that any official including the sitting president would be subject to possible disqualification for the future candidacy; “the Council would not consider speculations and partisan sentiments in its inherent duties of addressing the qualities of candidates,” he added.
On the question of whether in the future individuals implicated in the inordinate salary bills scandal would be qualified for key positions of the government, Kadkhodaei provided no comment which would be labeled as ‘political;' “any misdemeanor would provide to the Council help with the qualification process. They include salary bill scandal as well,” the spokesperson responded.
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