Days after national elections, the Iranian Ministry of the Interior has yet to release official results for the Feb. 26 polls, and some analysts are beginning to doubt that it ever will.
While the government and its supporters clearly won a sweeping victory in the capital, the picture in the rest of the country is much more diffuse and may remain that way for some time, if not permanently.
The ministry, which is overseeing the voting for the 290-seat parliament and the clerical Assembly of Experts, announced on Tuesday the names of 222 parliamentary candidates who won nationwide.
It also announced that there would be a second round of voting for 68 seats in several constituencies next month.
However, there has been no official comment on the affiliation of the winning candidates, and there may never be, making it difficult to determine how many seats the various factions have won.
A consensus seems to be developing — based on the most credible news media efforts at a tabulation — that the reformist-moderate combination seems to have secured between 80 and 90 seats in the Majlis, or parliament. The hardliners seem to have won a similar number.
About 60 seats have gone to independents, and the rest will be determined in the second round of voting.
The problem is that there are no parties in Iran, only individual candidates and temporary, loose alliances. This makes it extremely complicated to count which person supports which faction.
One famous politician, for example, Ali Motahhari, came in second in Tehran on the combined list of government supporters.
However, when it comes to social issues like the obligatory Islamic head scarf for women, he will probably side with the hardliners.
“In the end, all the members of the parliament are free to choose their own positions,” said Farshad Ghorbanpour, a political analyst close to the hardliners. “We expect most of our supporters to help the government, at least on economical issues.”
What seems likely is that the new parliament will find itself without a dominant faction, a rarity in the Islamic Republic.
Analysts expect that even the second round will not bring a majority to any of the groups.
This could lead to gridlock, experts say, because under Iran’s constitution, laws need a two-thirds majority for passage. Factions can obstruct the votes simply by not showing up.
In the absence of official results, Iranian news outlets, many aligned with one of the factions, have been making their own calculations, announcing victory for their respective patrons.
A moderate newspaper, Arman, in many ways a fanzine for former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, ran cheering headlines saying their favorite ayatollah came “out on top,” after he attracted the most votes in the assembly election.
It ran a picture of Rafsanjani underneath.
The state newspaper, Kayhan, a mouthpiece of Iran’s hardliners, dismissed claims by the reformists and moderates of a huge victory, with a front-page headline on Monday screaming: “Big lie!”
In an editorial, the paper said that the hardliners had won 153 seats in parliament, a clear majority.
The reformists, it said, “seem to have discovered a new form of mathematics.”
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, following the official line, has not disclosed the number of seats he thinks were won by the different factions.
He did write a letter to the interior minister on Wednesday thanking him for conducting “glorious elections.”
The vote, the government news agency IRNA wrote, quoting from a statement by Rouhani, was “a brilliant new chapter in the record book of religious democracy.”
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese