Final results for many Iranian parliamentary constituencies announced yesterday show supporters of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad relegated to a small fraction of the legislature, hugely outnumbered by the conservatives who once backed him, but then turned against him after he was perceived to challenge the authority of top clerics.
Iran has touted the turnout for Friday’s elections as a show of support for the country’s religious leadership in their confrontation with the West over Tehran’s controversial nuclear program.
It also represents another blow against the populist president who, while allied with the conservatives on foreign policy and many other issues, had tried to change the rules of the political game in the Islamic Republic, where the president and legislature are subordinate to religious figures like Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The new parliament will begin its sessions later this month. It has no direct control over major policy matters like Iran’s nuclear program, but it can influence the run-up to the election of Ahmadinejad’s successor next year.
Of 65 seats for grabs in Friday’s runoff election, Ahmadinejad’s opponents won 20, while the president’s supporters got only 8 seats. Independents won 11, according to the state media early yesterday.
Results for the rest, including the capital Tehran, were expected later in the day. About nine Ahmadinejad supporters are likely to win seats in Tehran where they were in a neck-and-neck race. The president’s opponents are almost certain to win the remaining 16 seats.
Ahmadinejad’s opponents had already won an outright majority in the 290-member legislature in the first round of voting in March.
Iran’s major reformist parties, who oppose both Ahmadinejad and the conservatives, mostly did not field candidates.
The results suggest Ahmadinejad will face a more belligerent parliament in the remaining time of the second four-year term in office that ends in August next year. His allies are likely to be ousted from key posts, and his economic policies challenged.
Iran’s media has claimed that the turnout yesterday matched that of the initial round of voting on March 2, when 64 percent of voters reportedly cast ballots.
“Mass turnout in runoff parliamentary elections,” declared a front-page headline in the government-run Iran Daily.
Iranian leaders have showcased the high voter turnout as a sign of trust in the clerical-led system and rejection of Western pressure over the nuclear issue. The West suspects Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons and is demanding that Iran stop uranium enrichment. Iran has refused, saying its program is aimed at power generation and cancer treatment.
“The vote is support for the ruling system as it faces the US and its allies over the nuclear program ... The vote also means that tensions will increase between Ahmadinejad and his opponents in the incoming parliament,” political analyst Ali Reza Khamesian said.
Ahmadinejad was voted in for a second term in 2009 in a hotly disputed election with the backing of the clerical establishment. However, he has seen his political fortunes decline sharply after he was perceived to have defied Khamenei in April last year over the appointment of an intelligence chief and tried to expand the authority of the presidency.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not