Press TV has conducted an interview with Seyyed Abdollah Hosseini, a political commentator from Tehran, and Jonathan Fryer, a writer and lecturer from London, to discuss the high turnout in Iran’s parliamentary and Assembly of Experts elections. All closing stations must allow all people now on the lines to get inside the stations and vote.
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At the same time as parliamentary elections, Iranians are also voting Friday for the Assembly of Experts, a clerical body empowered to choose or dismiss the country’s supreme leader.
Both bodies have been dominated by conservatives for years and reformists and moderates in the country hope the elections would constitute a shift in power.
Voters also picked representatives for the Assembly of Experts, an 88-seat body of clerics officially charged with selecting the replacement for the supreme leader from among its members. The next presidential election, in which Rouhani could run for re-election, is in spring 2017.
“In the aftermath of elections, the parliament is unlikely to act with much decisiveness and the Assembly of Experts probably will not in fact choose the next leader, but rather, rubber stamp a selection made by unelected leaders”, he said.
“We need fundamental reforms, we need to support the government”.
Marjohan Ranjbag, 36, a mother of two, said she preferred the conservative camp.
In parliament, supporters of moderate President Hassan Rouhani hope to dilute the influence of hard-liners who fear reforms and greater openness to the West could weaken the Islamic Republic.
There has been a unanimous push across the Iranian leadership to encourage a high voter turnout.
But retailer Sadegh Salehakhoundi, 40, said he would vote for conservatives due to their adherence to Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution and resistance to foreign powers.
For Assembly of Experts election, there are 31 main electoral districts and 1031 secondary constituencies, while for the Parliamentary elections, there are 207 main electoral districts and 855 secondary ones.
Fifty-five million voters are eligible to cast ballots that will ultimately elect 290 lawmakers.
A mobile ballot box was taken to his home, where he has been confined for five years.
The Supreme Leader signalled his preference to marginalise the reformists from these elections through the final cut of candidates approved by the Guardian Council, which is directly answerable to him.
Influential former president Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said a failure by reformists in the elections would be a major loss for the country.
“If hard-liners win the majority of seats in the parliament”, one anonymous student – “Farzad” – told NBC News, “Then we are going to have a continuation of existing problems, where ministers are threatened, [with] rampant inflation and isolation”. “By voting people decide the future of their country”, Rouhani was quoted as saying after casting his vote.
“On 17 February, the agency verified that Iran’s stock of heavy water had reached 130.9 metric tonnes”, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which polices the deal, said in a regular report on Iran’s nuclear program sent to its member states.
The polls are especially important as they come just one month after sanctions were lifted under the nuclear accord and the vote’s outcome will be seen as a de-facto referendum on Rouhani’s administration.
Hundreds of onlookers cheered Hassan Khomeini, a politically moderate cleric, when he arrived to vote at Jamaran, witnesses said. The country’s conservative Guardian Council vets candidates, and many reformists were reportedly among those disqualified.
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