Iranian conservatives yesterday tightened their control of parliament after the second round of elections, but the chamber could still be critical of controversial Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Eighty-two seats in the 290-seat parliament were at stake in the run-off voting on Friday after the first round on March 14 assured conservatives of a crushing victory over sidelined reformists.
Conservatives were set to take 10 out of the 11 seats in Tehran, having already swept up all 19 of the seats available in the first round, election officials said.
PHOTO: AFP
Just one reformist, Ali Reza Mahjoub, was set to sit in the new parliament for Tehran after squeezing into 11th place in the second round with reformist support hit by a low turnout in the capital.
But partial results from the provinces showed that the vote for reformists — whose hopes of mounting a significant challenge were stymied by mass pre-vote disqualifications — had held up respectably.
Iran’s state-run English channel Press-TV and the Arabic Al-Alam both said conservatives had won 52 seats in the run-offs and 30 had been secured by reformists.
If confirmed, this would give conservatives a total of around 200 seats and reformists at least 60 seats in the new parliament, with the remainder going to independents. A conservative-controlled parliament is in any case not expected to be wholeheartedly supportive of Ahmadinejad, who has alienated many of his fellow conservatives with controversial policies and speeches.
Ahmadinejad faces a re-election battle next year against a background of discontent over high inflation, and his toughest competition is expected to come from more moderate fellow conservatives.
Economists blame the president’s expansionary economic policies for stoking inflation, while his provocative attacks on opponents and frequent changes to his Cabinet have also stirred controversy.
Officials said Interior Minister Mostafa Pour Mohammadi would be stepping down just days after the election he was supposed to be organizing, in the ninth change to Ahmadinejad’s Cabinet since he was elected.
The highly respected judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi accused Ahmadinejad of “exaggeration, unrealistic campaigning and sloganeering” in his latest speeches, media reported yesterday.
In the past week Ahmadinejad has been locked in a public row with parliament speaker Gholam Ali Hadad Adel over implementing past legislation and also replaced his economy minister, Davoud Danesh Jaafari.
As he left office, Jaafari launched a withering attack on Ahmadinejad of a nature rarely seen in Iranian politics, accusing the president of concerning himself only with “peripheral” issues.
Friday’s turnout appeared to be down sharply on the first round of voting — when the authorities hailed participation of around 60 percent as a blow to Iran’s Western enemies — but officials insisted this was normal.
The authorities published no official figures over the share of seats after the first round, but according to estimates at least 130 were conservatives, more than 30 reformists and the remainder independents.
Reformists complained bitterly after hundreds of their best candidates were disqualified in pre-election vetting for not meeting the criteria required of members of parliament, including loyalty to the Islamic revolution.
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