Word: boycotts
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Iran's main student opposition group, the former Office to Foster Unity, whose name now translates into ?Islamic Iran?s Organization of the Educated Ones," had declared that neither participation nor a boycott would make any difference, contending, "The elections have been engineered in a way that it doesn't matter how many people participate. Either way, more conservative members will enter parliament...
President Bush may have urged Iranians to boycott Friday?s parliamentary election, but even the reformist factions who saw some 700 of their candidates disqualified by the Guardian Council are urging their supporters to vote. (They're still competing for around 100 of the 290 seats in the majlis, or legislature.) Many of those disqualified had once been considered khodi, or insiders, and include former ministers, governors and MPs, and heroes of the fight against the Shah or the Iran-Iraq war. Those barred from running even included two grandsons of the Islamic Republic's iconic founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini...
...Anyone with any connection to the reformists was ... disqualified," says Mostafa Tajzadeh, one of the directors of the United Reformists Coalition (URC) election campaign. "We had a lot of long discussions about this, and, in the end, decided not to boycott the elections." Tajzadeh, who was himself disqualified, explains the reformists' motivation: "If we don't participate, the entire majlis will fall into the hands of the conservatives and the situation will be one of homogeneous despotism. We can't let that happen...
...conservatives' campaigning over the past week, citing the row over the publication of Prophet Muhammad cartoons in Europe, the third round of U.N. sanctions against Iran, and the conflict in Gaza. In a speech, the country's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said all those who supported an election boycott - as some reformists whose candidates were barred from running had at first considered to - were "either fooled or supported by foreign interests...
...political wing of ETA) and Basque Nationalist Action (ANV), which the government recently banned for its connections to Batasuna, have called for Basques to abstain from voting in an election they see as illegitimate. But according to Landaburu, the killing, if it was an attempt to enforce the boycott, might well backfire. "I wouldn't be surprised if people turn out en masse to vote not only in Spain, but in the Basque Country too. The only response to a group like this, a group that asks for abstention, is to vote...