Nina Siakhali Moradi is a 27-year old Iranian woman who was recently elected to the city of Qazvin’s council under the promise of creating and building “Young Ideas for a Young Future.” She was also recently booted from office even faster than she was elected, because, according to a wide variety of media outlets today, she was too good-looking and that upset the country’s religious conservative leadership.
According to the New York Daily News, one quote that is being passed around has a senior Iranian official claiming rather bluntly that they “don’t want a catwalk model on the council,” so Moradi’s election was overturned for multiple contradictory reasons, including that her campaign posters were “vulgar and anti-religious” and that she simply never qualified to run, despite the fact that she received more than 10,000 votes.
But after the mayoral announcement, Moradi said she hadn’t heard anything from voting officials. “Almost 10,000 people voted for me and based on that I should be the first alternate member of the City Council,” she told local media. As the first alternate, she would have filled Ali Farazad’s council seat who was now set to become the mayor of Qazvin.
But Seyed Reza Hossaini, Qazvin’s representative in Parliament and an election review board member, said this would not be the case. “[Moradi’s] votes have been nullified due to her disqualification, as the review board did not approve her credentials. We have told her the reason why she has been disqualified.” But when asked about the review board’s decision, Moradi said she had received no explanation: “I have no information as to why they did this, you need to ask them.” (Via IranWire)
In fact, I did try to reach out to the review board to ask why they denied Moradi her spot on the city council, but I received an error message that told me I can’t send emails 2,000 years into the past.
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