Hardliners win all seats in Tehran
Tehran, Feb. 23: Iranian hardliners have won all 30 parliamentary seats in the capital, Tehran, state TV reported on Sunday, but officials have yet to announce the voter turnout from the nationwide elections two days ago.
State TV also said that former Tehran mayor Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, a top contender for the post of parliamentary speaker, was the top winner in the capital, with more that 1.2 million votes.
Voters had limited options on Friday’s ballot, as more than 7,000 potential candidates had been disqualified, most of them reformists and moderates. Among those disqualified were 90 sitting members of Iran’s 290seat Parliament who had wanted to run for re-election.
Iran’s interior minister said on Sunday that 42.6 percent of eligible voters had turned out at the country’s parliamentary election.
Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli said the participation rate was “acceptable” for Iran after it experienced bad weather, an air disaster, a coronavirus outbreak and other incidents in the lead-up to Friday’s election.
The turnout is widely seen as a measure of how Iranians view the country’s embattled theocratic government. The low turnout could signal widespread dissatisfaction with Iran’s clerical rulers and the system they preside over.
Iran’s supreme leader early Sunday accused enemy “propaganda” of trying to dissuade people from voting by amplifying the threat of the coronavirus.
A range of crises has beset Iran in the past year, including widespread anti-government protests in November and
US sanctions piling pressure on the plunging economy.
On the eve of the vote in Iran, the Trump administration sanctioned five election officials and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo slammed the election as a “sham.”
In remarks from his office in Tehran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei blamed the “negative propaganda” of Iran’s enemies for trying to discourage people from voting in Friday’s elections.