Ayatollah Khamenei’s candidates in Iran’s parliamentary election — an election some charge was not on the up and up — have well. And their hand — and Khamenei’s — are likely to be strengthened in coming months. The Christian Science Monitor:
Iran, under intense Western pressure over its disputed nuclear program, on Saturday declared an initial turnout of 64 percent in a parliamentary election shunned by most reformists as a sham.
Iran’s Islamic clerical leadership is eager to restore the damage to its legitimacy caused by the violent crushing of eight months of street protests after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was reelected in a 2009 vote his opponents said was rigged.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who endorsed the 2009 result, has since turned sharply against Ahmadinejad. Some early results from Friday’s vote suggested the divisive president’s supporters were losing ground in the 290-seat parliament.
His sister, Parvin Ahmadinejad, failed to win a seat in their hometown of Garmsar, the semi-official Mehr news agency said. Elsewhere, Khamenei loyalists appeared to be doing well.
Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar put the turnout at 64 percent after more than 26 million votes had been counted, telling state television the Iranian nation had disappointed its enemies by voting in such numbers.
The figure was close to the 65 percent predicted for weeks by hardline conservative leaders and media.Najjar said 135 seats had been won outright so far, with 10 going to a runoff. Final results were not expected on Saturday.
More background on the election via France 24:
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.