Iran Conservatives sweep election seats

TEHRAN – Iran’s conservatives swept up all the Tehran seats already decided in last week’s general elections, official reports said yesterday, prompting claims of foul play from beaten reformists.

Conservatives took 19 of the 30 seats available for Tehran in Friday’s elections, with the rest needing to be decided by a run-off vote in around one month, the state IRNA news agency reported, citing the interior ministry. Candidates require at least 25 per cent of the vote to be elected automatically.Twenty-two leading candidates who failed to reach this figure are eligible to contest the run-off for the remaining 11 seats.These include 12 conservatives and 10 reformists, meaning reformists should be able to pick up a handful of seats to add to the 40 they are estimated to win nationwide.Reformists had been badly hit by pre-vote disqualifications by hardline vetting bodies, losing hundreds of their best candidates including many sitting MPs in the 290-seat parliament.But Hossein Marashi, head of the main reformist coalition in Tehran, also questioned the validity of the capital’s vote count which had taken several days to be finalised.”We would have liked to confirm interior ministry’s vote count.But unfortunately we should look at the results with doubt,” he told the Kargozaran newspaper.He also insisted that in reality the reformist performance was far stronger in Tehran, citing reports from the coalition’s observers on polling day.”The Tehran results surprised everyone as, according to numerous reports, there should have been reformists among the 10 top candidates,” added leading reformist candidate Majid Ansari, according to the Baharestan website.Reformists had already complained about the timing of the vote a week before the main holidays for the New Year, a period where the country virtually shuts down for several weeks and no newspapers are published.The conservative news website Tabnak said that 19 conservative candidates had only passed the 25 per cent cut-off because the authorities chose to ignore 170,000 void or blank ballots that had been cast.According to Tabnak, only 11 conservative MPs should have been elected in the first round in Tehran.The Slovenian presidency of the European Union has already condemned the elections as neither free nor fair, an opinion echoed on Monday by the US State Department.But Iran has lashed out at international criticism of the vote, saying that official participation numbers of over 60 per cent were a message of defiance from Iranians to Western enemies.Several close allies of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, including ultra-conservative cleric Morteza Agha Tehrani who finished second, are among the MPs who have been elected in Tehran.But there are also some critical voices.Parliament speaker Gholam Ali Hadad Adel, who has been unafraid of speaking out on some issues, polled the most votes, while Ahmad Tavakoli – one of Ahmadinejad’s leading economic critics – finished fourth.Nampa-AFPCandidates require at least 25 per cent of the vote to be elected automatically.Twenty-two leading candidates who failed to reach this figure are eligible to contest the run-off for the remaining 11 seats.These include 12 conservatives and 10 reformists, meaning reformists should be able to pick up a handful of seats to add to the 40 they are estimated to win nationwide.Reformists had been badly hit by pre-vote disqualifications by hardline vetting bodies, losing hundreds of their best candidates including many sitting MPs in the 290-seat parliament.But Hossein Marashi, head of the main reformist coalition in Tehran, also questioned the validity of the capital’s vote count which had taken several days to be finalised.”We would have liked to confirm interior ministry’s vote count.But unfortunately we should look at the results with doubt,” he told the Kargozaran newspaper.He also insisted that in reality the reformist performance was far stronger in Tehran, citing reports from the coalition’s observers on polling day.”The Tehran results surprised everyone as, according to numerous reports, there should have been reformists among the 10 top candidates,” added leading reformist candidate Majid Ansari, according to the Baharestan website.Reformists had already complained about the timing of the vote a week before the main holidays for the New Year, a period where the country virtually shuts down for several weeks and no newspapers are published.The conservative news website Tabnak said that 19 conservative candidates had only passed the 25 per cent cut-off because the authorities chose to ignore 170,000 void or blank ballots that had been cast.According to Tabnak, only 11 conservative MPs should have been elected in the first round in Tehran.The Slovenian presidency of the European Union has already condemned the elections as neither free nor fair, an opinion echoed on Monday by the US State Department.But Iran has lashed out at international criticism of the vote, saying that official participation numbers of over 60 per cent were a message of defiance from Iranians to Western enemies.Several close allies of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, including ultra-conservative cleric Morteza Agha Tehrani who finished second, are among the MPs who have been elected in Tehran.But there are also some critical voices.Parliament speaker Gholam Ali Hadad Adel, who has been unafraid of speaking out on some issues, polled the most votes, while Ahmad Tavakoli – one of Ahmadinejad’s leading economic critics – finished fourth.Nampa-AFP