Iran Presidential Candidates Take Part in First Debate

The eight men who were selected by the Guardian Council last week to run for president in the 14 June election are holding their first televised debate today. The debate started moments ago and the candidates will each respond to a series of questions on the country’s economic situation, its nuclear program, relations with the West and a number of domestic issues. Two more televised debates are scheduled for Wednesday and Friday.

The eight chosen candidates are:

• Mohammad Reza Aref, former First Vice President
• Qolam-Ali Haddad-Adel, Member of Majlis
• Saeed Jalili, Supreme National Security Council
• Mohsen Rezaie, Expediency Council and former IRGC commander
• Hassan Rouhani, Strategic Research Center 
• Baqer Qalibaf, Tehran Mayor
• Mohammad Qarazi, former Telecommunications Minister
• Ali Akbar Velayati, former Foreign Minister

UPDATE: This is becoming not a good night for state TV. In the second part of the debate, the moderator asked seven questions with multiple answers, like the standardized tests at schools, and the eight chosen candidates had to answer either yes or no, or choose one of two or three options, like choosing A, B, or C in a test. They could not offer explanations why they picked a particular answer, and could not debate among themselves. At this point, the candidates started to object, some quite angrily, to the format of the debate, saying it was more suitable to testing students than starting a debate among eight people, one of whom will be the country’s president in three weeks. Not surprisingly, most of the answers to questions in this part were, “The Question is Wrong!” This is not going well!

UPDATE 2: The debate finally got into issues, although many candidates still not happy with the format. One of the best reports on tonight’s debate is filed by the Christian Science Monitor’s Scott Peterson.


“In a marathon four-hour debate on the themes of economic “justice,” failing trust in government, and current mismanagement, the mild-mannered men criticized present and past administrations but did not put forward their own concrete plans,” Peterson reports.

To read Scott Peterson’s piece, please click here.

Photo credit: A screen capture of state TV's broadcast of the first presidential debate (IRIB/Press TV)

Television debate details for the 2013 Iran election

 

Details for Iran's televised presidential debates have been announced. There will be three televised debates held on May 31, June 5 and June 7, involving all candidates. The previous person-to-person format has been dropped in favor of the group approach.

Hosting the debates will be Kamran Najafzadeh, a well known TV news personality in Iran. Najafzadeh recently made a name for himself in France by attempting to expose the hypocricy of France retaining Iranian antiquities (while at the same time maintaining the role of victim in the seizure of artworks by the Nazis in World War II). For that and his attempted expose on the French failure to deliver on Iran's shares of the Eurodif nuclear plant (10 percent of its stocks belong to Iran), he was recently forced to leave France.

IRIB will also offer a variety of presidential election programming. In contrast to the American approach where big money donations from a variety of sources and special interests buys each of  the two candidates competing levels of exposure on television and radio, in Iran each of the eight candidates are provided a level playing field of 420 minutes of television programming and 216 minutes on radio (including two slots of 30 minute programming on television Channel 1). In total, IRIB will have more than 2,000 hours of programming dedicated to the election.

TV debate details sourced from Wikipedia
File photo: PressTV

Presidential Debates: Ahmadinejad vs. Karrubi (Looser: Islamic Republic)

Long anticipated debate between Karrubi and Ahmadinejad over the economy and political freedom turned out to be the biggest disappointment in the series of debates among the four presidential contenders. The faceoff on Saturday was a battle between two of the most powerful political figures in Islamic Republic over who was the most corrupt politician between the two. Ahmadinejad accused Karrubi of accepting $300,000 in bribes from Shahram Jazayeri, a shadowy figure involved in a number of recent financial scandals, who is spending time in prison now. Karrubi accused Ahmadinejad of attempting to wire $7 billion to a foreign head of state only to be stopped by the Central Bank and the leader.

Karrubi started the debate by concentrating his attacks over Ahmadinejad’s superstitions and later brought up the financial and corruption issues. At no time during the debate did he mention his well-publicized platforms on distribution of oil wealth, freedom of press and assembly and his concrete opposition to current administration’s policies. He looked utterly unprepared and lost during the debate.

Ahmadinejad from the beginning focused on Karrubi’s alleged corrupt character. He asked the former Majlis speaker where he got the money to purchase his lavish home in a most expensive neighborhood of Tehran, in contrast to his modest house in a poor neighborhood at the start of revolution. He asked him where he got the money to pay for his plan to spend $2 million in SMS messages to be sent out as part of his current presidential campaign, and finally he accused him of the $300,000 bribe from Jazayeri.

The real looser in the debate seemed to be the Islamic Republic itself. For the past several nights, some of the most powerful men in the country have accused each other of high corruption. The Iranian people will undoubtedly take note of the corruption levels penetrating the highest strata of the regime.

The four candidates running for president did not just volunteer to run. Their “impeccable” credentials were checked and approved by the Guardian Council. They were chosen as the four most honest loyalists to the ideals of Islamic revolution out of a list of nearly 500 candidates. If this is the best the Islamic Republic has to offer, then indeed the continued legitimacy of the government has been tarnished during these debates.

Presidential Debates: Ahmadinejad vs. Mousavi

Ahmadinejad (left) facing Mousavi (right)

Tehran. 3 June 2009. Press TV Photo

In the second night of televised presidential debates, the incumbent, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, faced former premier and his main rival Mir Hossein Mousavi. Ahmadinejad tried not to debate Mousavi directly, but instead kept attacking former presidents Mohammad Khatami and Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, as if he was running against them.

Ahmadinejad accused Khatami and Rafsanjani of masterminding a plot to oust him from of power. He specifically accused Rafsanjani of sending a message to one of the kings of the neighboring countries, understood to be the Saudi monarch, in which he had told the king not to worry about Ahmadinejad, because “his term is over in 6 months.” Ahmadinejad did not produce any proof for his accusation.

Mousavi criticized Ahmadinejad for attacking the former presidents who were not even present in the debate. Mousavi observed that Ahmadinejad was using the tactic to shift the focus of the debate away from Mousavi’s criticism of Ahmadinejad administration’s policies.

In the sharpest attack against Ahmadinejad, Mousavi said he prefered the country to be managed not based on adventurism, instability, theatrics, superstition, secrecy, egotism, extremism and lack of regard to laws, but instead he preferred a management style based on calmness and sobriety, realism, transparency, cooperation and moderation.

On foreign policy, Mousavi mocked Ahmadinejad of hallucinating that his administration was controlling the world and accused him of sloganeering instead of managing the country’s foreign policy. Mousavi gave the example of the arrest of British marines off the Iranian coast two years ago, in which the administration elevated international tension over the incident by announcing that the British will be tried and executed.

The debate got nasty as Ahmadinejad accused Mousavi’s wife, Zahra Rahnavard, of going to school to obtain two masters degrees while serving in the government and entering a PhD program without passing the required entrance exams. Mousavi called Ahmadinejad’s personal attack on his wife an “immoral” move.

Presidential Debates: Karrubi vs. Rezaie

Karrubi (left) facing Rezaie to start presidential debates
Tehran. 2 June 2009

Fars photo; Press TV logo

In the first of six debates between the four presidential candidates, former Majlis speaker Mehdi Karrubi faced former IRGC commander Mohsen Rezaie. The debate, televised by IRIB Channel 3, was cordial and friendly. Both candidates reserved their sharpest attacks against the policies of the sitting president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, especially in regards to the worsening economic condition in the country.

Rezaie proposed the creation of National Development Trust (NDT) to invest profits from the country’s huge oil exports in development projects. Rezaie’s NDT will be run as a public trust whose shares will be divided among the Iranian citizens. Karrubi wanted to distribute the oil profits among the citizens by directly paying $73/month (700,000 rials a month) to all citizens above the age of 18, an approach that has been widely criticized as hyper inflationary.

On political front, Karrubi emphasized the importance of implementing all the existing laws guaranteeing basic freedoms of the citizens, and creating new laws to expand those freedoms. Rezaie believed the implementation of the current laws can guarantee the basic freedoms in the country. Rezaie also emphasized the importance of forming a government of national unity to tackle the mounting problems facing the country.

On Wednesday, former premier Mir-Hossein Mousavi will debate President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. They are the two leading candidates in the 12 June elections.

Presidential Debates

From top left: Ahmadinejad, Mousavi, Rezaie and Karrubi

AFP Photo / Press TV logo

Iran’s presidential candidates will debate each other in six one-and-half hour televised programs starting 2 June, ISNA reported today.

2 June: Karoubi-Rezai
3 June: Ahmadinejad-Mousavi
4 June: Mousavi-Rezai
6 June: Ahmadinejad-Karoubi
7 June: Karoubi-Mousavi
8 June: Ahmadinejad-Rezai

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