The Hindu : Iranian polls: Conservatives establish lead

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Feb 22, 2004

International

International

Iranian polls: Conservatives establish lead

By Atul Aneja

MANAMA, FEB. 21. Contrary to expectations, nearly half of Iran's electorate cast its ballot in Friday's parliamentary poll, where the turnout for the elections had become a major political issue between conservatives and reformists.

According to senior Government officials, between 20 and 22 million of the 46 million eligible voters turned up for elections. That would mean that between 43 and 46 per cent of the electorate cast its vote. The Guardians Council, a conservative supervisory body that validates the results has contested this figure, by pointing out that the total size of the Iranian electorate stood at 43 million. Going by its calculations, the polling touched the 50 per cent mark, a psychologically important benchmark.

In Teheran, a stronghold of the reformists, where the only 10 per cent of the voters were expected to show up, the turnout stood at around 30 per cent. Despite the respectable showing, the polling for the seventh Majlis (Parliament) was the lowest since the Islamic Revolution, which took place 25 years ago. The lowest polling so far was in the 1980 elections when 53 per cent of the electorate exercised its franchise.

Results from Friday's poll have stated trickling in and show the conservatives establishing a comfortable lead.

According to figures released by the Interior Ministry, conservatives had won 43 of the first 83 constituencies declared.

Reformists had won 21 seats, and the rest went to independents, whose sympathies were not yet known.

In 17 constituencies no candidate polled more than 25 per cent, which would mean that there would be a run-off later. The elections are expected to see the rise of "conservative-technocrats" — people with good academic credentials but who are politically orthodox and economically pragmatic.

Organised under the banner of "Coalition of Builders of Islamic Iran", they have been emphasising the necessity of reviving Iran's economy. Their spokesman, Gholam-Ali Hadad-Adel, has recently stressed that revamping the economy was the country's top priority. He also pointed out that the Coalition of Builders rejected "violence and force" to enforce Islamic regulations.

Analysts see the moderate, but higher-than-expected turnout, as a setback for the reformists who had asked the people to boycott the poll.

A lower turnout, it had hoped, would have questioned the legitimacy of the new Parliament. The hard-liners had also staked their prestige on voting percentages and Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had more than once exhorted the people to vote in large numbers.

The stand-off between the conservatives and reformists had come to a head last month, when the Council of Guardians disqualified thousands of candidates.

Both the United States and the European Union have been critical of the mass exclusion of reformist candidates.

But the former conservative President, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, has countered this criticism by pointing out that Iran had a better turnout than the United States, where a President winning only 25 per cent of the vote had entered the White House.

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