Conservatives on track to dominate Iran’s parliament

Former speaker Mohammad Qalibaf won re-election to Iran’s parliament, with initial results showing that the conservatives will continue to dominate the legislature after an election marred by a low turnout.

The official Irna news agency put the turnout at about “41 per cent” among 61 million eligible voters. No official figure has been announced yet.

Authorities were still counting ballots two days after Friday’s vote for members of parliament and for the Assembly of Experts, which selects the country’s supreme leader.

Mr Qalibaf, a conservative who previously was chief of Iran’s police force before being elected mayor of Tehran twice, was among the winners of the 30 seats allotted to the capital, all of which have been declared, according to the Tasnim news agency.

Turnout in Tehran was about 25 per cent, according to Iranian media, which reported that ultraconservative candidates secured 12 of the 30 seats.

The election took place amid a severe economic crisis deepened by international sanctions. A state TV poll conducted before the vote found that more than half of respondents were indifferent about the election.

According to the London-based Iran International news outlet, a high number of the votes cast were blank or invalid, with some voters entering the names of football players. Iran’s previous lowest election turnout was for the parliamentary polls held in 2020 amid the Covid-19 pandemic, when 42.57 per cent of voters took part.

The reformist daily Shargh predicted the next parliament would be “in the hands of radical conservatives” who “took advantage of the opportunity created by the low participation”.

The pro-government Iran Daily said authorities should see the low turnout as a “wake-up call and redouble their efforts to fortify their support base”.

Ham Mihan, another reformist newspaper, said that “the soul of the elections was lost” and that turnout was “far from victorious”.