Iran to air live presidential debates after U-turn

TEHRAN // Iran will show live television debates ahead of May’s presidential election, reversing the interior ministry’s decision to show only pre-recorded versions, which had triggered an outcry.

The U-turn came days after the body which sets campaigning rules for the May 19 poll said the debates would not be broadcast live as in previous elections, sparking outrage on social media.

“After demands by the Iranian nation and the candidates for a review (of the decision), the presidential elections campaign commission decided ... that debates may be broadcast live,” the ministry said in a statement on official news agency IRNA.

Moderate President Hassan Rouhani and his conservative rivals Ebrahim Raisi and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf all rejected the ban.

Televised debates are a relatively new feature of Iranian presidential elections and are believed to have influenced the results of votes in 2009 and 2013. Banning them was seen as an attempt to avoid embarrassing certain candidates by exposing details about their actions in previous roles.

Mr Ghalibaf, a hardline former police chief, lost momentum in a 2013 election bid after his rival Mr Rouhani said he had proposed allowing student protests in 1999 so that security forces could crush them.

In 2009, live debates between conservative incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and reformist candidates Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi turned into heated exchanges of accusations that many said went too far for the regime.

Mr Karroubi and Mr Mousavi have been under house arrest since 2011 for leading protests against the re-election of Mr Ahmadinejad.

Before the reversal, interior minister Abdolreza Rahmani-Fazli, a member of the conservative-dominated commission, defended the ban on live debates, saying it would avoid “insults, accusations and (violations of) public ethical codes”.

The powerful Guardian Council, which vets candidates, last week blocked Mr Ahmadinejad and his deputy from standing for another term. On Sunday he said he would not endorse any of the candidates.

“We clearly announce that we have not and will not support any candidate in the upcoming elections,” he said in a letter, signed by himself and his former deputy and presidential hopeful Hamid Baghaie.

Mr Ahmadinejad announced his candidacy at the last minute, going against the advice of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who said it would “polarise” the nation. Mr Ahmadinejad’s anti-Israel rhetoric and nuclear ambitions saw Iran increasingly isolated from the outside world. He remains popular among the poor sections of the society, who liked his populist policies such as distributing monthly cash handouts.

But the spokesman of the Guardian Council said that was not why Mr Ahmadinejad was disqualified from standing.

Campaigning began on Friday with Motafa Mirsalim, a conservative, criticising president Hassan Rouhani’s attempts to build bridges with the west. The landmark 2015 nuclear agreement, in which Iran agreed to curb its uranium enrichment, had failed. International sanctions not be lifted as promised and the country’s economy had not improved, Mr Mirsalim said.

He added that he would abide by the nuclear deal if elected but said US pPresident Donald Trump’s administration had already undermined the agreement.

All six candidates are set to take part in the first debate on Friday. r Rouhani is the front-runner.

* Agence France-Presse