Iran could chart its course for the next decade and beyond when hard-liners and moderates clash on February 26 in elections for parliament and the powerful body that will choose the country’s next supreme leader.
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The vote for the lawmakers was the first election since the country’s nuclear deal with world powers took effect.
Interior Ministry officials said counting of the votes in Tehran and other cities was still not final, but preliminary results carried out by the semi-official Fars and Mehr News agencies indicate reformists and independents linked to them were leading so far against hardliners in several cities.
Iranians took to the polls Friday to vote for the first time since its nuclear deal with the West, The Associated Press reported.
The Islamic republic’s ultimate authority, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was among the first to vote and he urged the country’s 55 million-strong electorate to follow suit, as “it’s both a duty and a right”. Iranians across the Islamic Republic…
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.
Al Jazeera’s Jonah Hull, reporting from Tehran, said while reformists and moderates were “expected to hold sway” in the capital, no one expected a country-wide landslide.
Parliamentarians are elected for four years, but the assembly has an eight-year term.
“The most important goal we want as reformists is to have a pragmatic, intelligent and balanced parliament that will stand behind [president] Mr. Rouhani and his programs”, former moderate president Hashemi Rafsanjani’s daughter Faezeh told NBC News.
As well as 290 MPs, voters were selecting the Assembly of Experts, an 88-member committee of clerics whose responsibilities include monitoring the work of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The July 14 deal with six world powers puts Iran’s various nuclear activities under IAEA watch for up to 15 years, with an option to re-impose sanctions should Tehran break its commitments. “I have done my research and chose to vote for the principlists [hard-liners], they are the best and care for the wellbeing of the people”, she said.
In this photo released by official website of the office of Iranian Presidency, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani addresses election officials in Tehran, Jan. 21, 2016. With sanctions lifted and Western investors beginning to return to Iran, there are high hopes for an improvement in daily life, he says. Ahmadinejad’s election victory in 2005 sealed the movement’s downfall.
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The Guardian Council, appointed half by Khamenei and half by the ultra-conservative judiciary, disqualified thousands of candidates for the legislature and vetoed 80 per cent of those seeking election to the Assembly of Experts.
