Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Mar. 26 – Iran will hold a second round of polling on April 25 for approximately 30 percent of Majlis (Parliament) seats which were not decided in the original poll held on March 14, state media reported on Wednesday. Iran Focus
Tehran, Iran, Mar. 26 – Iran will hold a second round of polling on April 25 for approximately 30 percent of Majlis (Parliament) seats which were not decided in the original poll held on March 14, state media reported on Wednesday.
Iran’s Interior Ministry has announced that more than 70 percent of the 200 Majlis seats decided in the first round went to the conservative faction allied to hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Majlis has 290 seats in total.
The official news agency IRNA quoted that the ultra-conservative constitutional watchdog Guardians Council as saying that the run-offs would be held in 43 constituencies on April 25.
The original March 14 poll was by and large ignored by the population, 44 million of which had been eligible to vote.
Voting stations were deserted in many parts of Iran despite calls by senior government officials for a mass turnout. In the usually bustling Iranian capital Tehran, some polling stations only drew a handful of people and several were empty throughout many hours of the day.
The main Iranian opposition movement People’s Mojahedin had urged Iranians to boycott the polls.
The Guardians Council barred close to 2,000 candidates from standing in the elections, and in most districts it was a question of conservative versus conservative.
Far from being a popularity contest, analysts and the Iranian opposition described the poll as a manifestation of factional feuding.
The European Union denounced the elections as neither fair nor free.
Many Iranians have become disenchanted by promises of prosperity offered to them by Ahmadinejad who had vowed to fight corruption in the officialdom and distribute the countrys huge oil revenues.
