Why did Rouhani not publish the Guardian Council’s response?
Why did Rouhani not publish the Guardian Council’s response? On May 14, Rouhani, in a letter titled ‘Defense of the Republic,’ explained the Guardian Council’s response to the announcement of the reasons for his disqualification in the sixth election of the Assembly of Experts and defended himself.
Rouhani did not publish the Guardian Council’s letter, possibly because it was marked confidential. However, can the Guardian Council’s response to Rouhani be classified as confidential information?
Article 108 of the Constitution regarding the election of the Assembly of Experts states that the law concerning the number and conditions of the experts, the quality of their election, and their internal meeting regulations for the first term must be prepared by the jurists of the first Guardian Council and approved by a majority vote and finalized by the leader.
From then on, any changes and revisions in this law and the approval of other regulations related to the duties of the experts are within their own jurisdiction. The first law of the Assembly of Experts election, using the term ‘law’ instead of ‘regulation’ in Article 108, is unique and was prepared by the jurists of the first Guardian Council and approved by the leader on October 2, 1980.
This law underwent amendments in the years 1982, 1990, 2006, 2007, and 2015, although in the fifth term of the Assembly of Experts, it was announced that a new text was approved on September 27, 2023, replacing the previous law, but in fact, it is an amended version of the same previous text.
The final text of the law, which has 31 articles and 23 notes, includes seven chapters regarding the number of experts, the duration of the term, the quality of the elections, the conditions of the candidates, the conditions of the voters, the law on the candidates’ advertising activities, and the complaints and how they are addressed.
The Constitution has entrusted the approval of the Assembly of Experts election law to this very body, but delegating the authority to approve related regulations, such as the executive regulation of the Assembly of Experts election law Article 6 and the regulation on the supervision of the Assembly of Experts election Article 8 Note 1, to the Guardian Council is questionable.
Although in the single article of the law on the necessity of accurately addressing the complaints of disqualified candidates in various elections approved on October 12, 1999, the Assembly of Experts election was exempted, Article 14 of the Assembly of Experts election law explicitly states that the jurists of the Guardian Council, after necessary investigations, are responsible to the candidates and will provide written and exclusive reasons and documentation for disqualification or annulment of the votes of the elected individual upon request, without any mention of the classification of the response.
Before the revolution, on February 18, 1975, the National Consultative Assembly approved the law on the punishment for the publication and disclosure of confidential and classified state documents in 8 articles, which is still valid.
According to Article 1 of this law, state documents include any type of writing or recorded information related to the duties and activities of ministries and state-affiliated institutions that have been prepared or received by the mentioned authorities.
Furthermore, classified state documents are defined as those whose disclosure is contrary to the interests of the government or the country, and confidential state documents are those whose disclosure is contrary to the specific administrative interests of the organizations mentioned in this article.
Article 2 prescribes imprisonment for the disclosure of confidential and classified documents, ranging from six months to three years and two to ten years, respectively. The final article anticipates that the regulation on the maintenance of classified and confidential state documents and the classification and identification of documents and information will be prepared by the Ministry of Justice and approved by the Council of Ministers.
This regulation was approved shortly thereafter on December 22, 1966, in 23 articles by the Council of Ministers. In this regulation, confidential documents are defined as those whose unauthorized disclosure would disrupt the internal affairs of an organization or be contrary to the administrative interests of that organization.
Additionally, the Guardian Council has an internal regulation approved by its members on July 13, 2000. However, there is no mention of how to announce the reasons for disqualification and possibly the classification of that information.
Clause 2 of Article 3 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran refers to raising public awareness in all areas. It is the right of the entire nation to know why a figure who has held the highest legislative, executive, and security positions for four decades lacks qualification.
Recent laws passed by the Islamic Consultative Assembly, such as the Law on the Publication and Free Access to Information on January 26, 2009, are based on transparency, free circulation of information, and awareness of state documents, considering restrictions as exceptions.
Although the philosophy behind the confidentiality of the Guardian Council’s response is to preserve the dignity of the disqualified candidate, a figure like Hassan Rouhani, with nearly three decades of experience as Secretary and President of the Supreme National Security Council, was not willing to risk disclosing this confidential document to prevent creating a precedent for future disqualifications.
