Iran moderates eye more gains in run-off parliamentary election

ANKARA: Iranians lined up outside polling stations on Friday to vote in a second round of parliamentary elections, with allies of reformist President Hassan Rouhani seeking to wrest more seats from hardliners.

Rouhani’s moderate and centrist allies made big gains in elections on Feb 26 for parliament and a clerical body that will elect the next Supreme Leader, but they failed to win a majority of the 290-member assembly.

Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli, speaking on Iranian state television, said people would vote on 68 undecided seats in constituencies where candidates failed to get 25 percent of votes cast in the first round. Results will be announced on Sunday, he said.

The current parliament is dominated by hardline allies of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

But moderates won all 30 seats representing the capital Tehran in the first round of elections.

Reformist former President Mohammad Khatami last Sunday called for a high turnout in the second round of elections to “repeat the epic’’, a reference to moderates’ big gains in February.

Iranian media are banned from publishing the name or images of Khatami, who was president from 1997 to 2005. But Khatami managed to publish a five-minute video on social media befroe the February vote that helped to change the balance in favour of moderates.

Khamenei also has called for a high turnout, saying it will display Iranians’ trust in the establishment. The turnout was 62 percent in February.

An unofficial tally by Reuters of first round results showed conservatives won about 112 seats, reformers and centrists 90 and independents and religious minorities 29.

The figures are approximate because Iran does not have rigid party affiliations. Some candidates were backed by both camps.

More independents with no clear political affiliation are expected to enter the parliament because of en masse disqualification of thousands of pro-reform candidates by hardline watchdog body, the Guardian Council, befroe the first round vote.

Gains by Rouhani’s allies outside Tehran were more limited in the first round.

“The election will end at 1900. But it might be extended if necessary. The counting will start immediately after the closure of the polls,’’ Rahmani Fazli told state TV.

The new parliament will begin its session on May 27. It has no direct control over major policy matters but it can back the policies of Rouhani to bolster the sanction-hit economy.

International sanctions were lifted in January in exchange for curbing Iran’s nuclear programme under a deal reached with world powers in 2015.

A moderate-dominated parliament also can influence the re-election of Rouhani as president in 2017.