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Hard-Liners Expected to Win Iranian Elections

RFE/RL

   Iranians awaited final figures from parliamentary elections, but few
   doubted that conservatives and hard-liners would be the landslide
   winners in the vote marked by unusually low turnout.

   Prior to the February 21 vote, thousands of reformists and relative
   moderates were disqualified by hard-line election officials, leaving
   little doubt as to the eventual victors.

   The National Elections Committee said on Saturday that it had counted
   votes in 71 out of 208 constituencies across Iran.

   Esmail Musavi, a spokesman for the committee, said electoral
   authorities would "try to publish the final figures tonight, and if
   that task takes too long, tomorrow [February 23]."

   In constituencies where candidates failed to get 20 percent of votes
   cast, a runoff election will be held in April.

   The Interior Ministry said that conservative candidates led by Mohammad
   Bagher Qalibaf were leading in the races for Tehran's 30 parliamentary
   seats.

   Qalibaf, a former Tehran mayor and air force commander within the
   powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), is seen as a prime
   candidate to become the next parliament speaker.

   Media affiliated with conservatives and hard-liners projected a
   sweeping victory for their candidates.

   The semiofficial Fars news agency, which is affiliated with the IRGC,
   claimed the outcome from 183 out of the 290 seats in parliament had
   been decided, saying that conservative candidates would win 135 seats,
   while reformists were set to secure 20 seats and independents 28.

   In the 2016 vote, a bloc of reformists and moderate conservatives won
   41 percent of the 290 parliamentary seats. Hard-liners won 29 percent
   and independents took 28 percent.

   All of those standing for election were prescreened by a group of
   hard-line Islamic clerics in the Guardians Council, who cleared 7,148
   candidacies and disqualified some 9,000 potential candidates.

   Ninety members of Iran's outgoing parliament were among those who were
   rejected. Many were moderates or reformist lawmakers who support
   engagement with the West.

   Because of the disqualifications, turnout was expected to be lower than
   usual despite pleas by Iranian leaders for citizens to head to the
   polls.

   The Interior Ministry, which oversaw the election, did not release the
   turnout, but there were indications that voter participation was
   unusually low.

   Authorities three times extended voting by a total of five hours to
   allow more people to cast ballots. VOA reported that dozens of video
   reports purportedly showing nearly empty polling stations were being
   posted to social media. Germany's dpa news agency quoted locals in
   Tehran as saying many polling stations were empty.

   Fars news agency estimated turnout at 40 percent nationwide and 30
   percent in Tehran.

   Britain's Guardian newspaper put the turnout in Tehran at 20-25
   percent.

   Before the vote, authorities had predicted a turnout of about 50
   percent, compared with 62 percent in the 2016 parliamentary elections.
   

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