Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Apr. 01 – Iran’s constitutional watchdog has approved the result of the March 14 Parliamentary election for the Iranian capital Tehran and 35 other districts. Iran Focus
Tehran, Iran, Apr. 01 – Iran’s constitutional watchdog has approved the result of the March 14 Parliamentary election for the Iranian capital Tehran and 35 other districts.
The decision was announced by Abbas-Ali Kadkhodaei, spokesman for the ultra-conservative Guardians Council.
Until now, the Guardians Council has approved the results of at least 136 of the 207 constituencies whose results had previously been declared.
A second round of polling will take place on April 25 for approximately 30 percent of Majlis (Parliament) seats which were not decided in the original poll.
Iran’s Interior Ministry 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.
In Tehran, which has 30 seats in total, all 19 seats whose results were declared went to the conservative faction, prompting claims by the minority faction that the vote had been rigged.
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.
