Conservatives fight it out in Iran elections
Tehran (AsiaNews/Agencies) - Official Iranian sources claim that 65 per cent of Iran's 52 per cent eligible voters cast their ballot in yesterday's parliamentary elections. However, the report cannot be independently verified, as all else concerning the election to Iran's 290-seat Majlis (parliament). If it were true, it would vindicate Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, who had called for a large turnout.
Although not running for office, Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are the real players. The vote itself is a virtual referendum on the president, who has been at loggerheads with the supreme leader for much of his second mandate, and now has one more year before the next presidential elections in 2013, when he will not be able to run.
Ahmadinejad never had a majority in parliament. Now however, observers are waiting to see how will manage to govern in his last year in power. Early results bode ill for him; even his sister Parvin failed to secure a seat in Garmsar, the president's home town.
Iranian elections are very peculiar, quite different from Western standards of democracy. All candidates must be vetted and approved by the regime. They must also be university trained and faithful to the ruling theocracy.
In the current round of voting, the competition is between the pro-Khamenei United Front of Principalists and the pro-Ahmadinejad Resistance Front.
The opposition Green movement is not a player any more. Its leaders, Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, are under de facto house arrest since February 2011. They had lost in the 2009 presidential elections.
Still, one pro-reform candidate, Mohammadreza Tabesh, was elected yesterday.
Despite all its controls, the regime is still concerned. Opposition sources say that in the weeks leading up to the vote, repression against journalists, lawyers and electronic media intensified.
In the latest episode, Reza Jelodarzadeh, a veteran of the Iran-Iraq War who was wounded in combat, was arrested. He is the editor-in-chief of the recently banned Sobh-e Azadi magazine. His family knows nothing about his whereabouts.
His is the most glaring case, but not the only one. A 2011 Amnesty international report noted that public executions rose four-fold last year and death penalties doubled.
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