Iranian president’s critics score in election
TEHRAN, Iran – Early returns on Saturday showed hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s conservative opponents leading in elections for local councils and a powerful clerical body, widely considered a test of popular approval for the hard-line leader.
Ahmadinejad’s anti-Israel rhetoric and staunch stand on Iran’s nuclear program are believed to have divided the conservatives who voted him into power. Some conservatives feel Ahmadinejad has spent too much time confronting the West and failed to deal with Iran’s struggling economy.
Tehran newspapers and semiofficial news agencies reported unofficial results Saturday showing that no single party would be able to claim outright victory in Friday’s elections, partly because of divisions within the conservative faction.
Iran’s political scene is broadly split between conservative and pro-reform camps.
Officials have said preliminary results are expected today, with final results coming Monday or later.
The semiofficial Mehr news agency said unofficial results showed candidates who support Ahmadinejad trailing in Tehran’s municipal elections behind supporters of Mayor Mohammed Bagher Qalibaf, a moderate conservative.
Former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, considered an Ahmadinejad opponent, was leading in the Assembly of Experts election in Tehran, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported. The assembly is a body of 86 senior clerics that monitors Iran’s supreme leader and chooses his successor.
The race for the assembly is dominated by two main rivals: Rafsanjani and Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah Yazdi, widely seen as Ahmadinejad’s spiritual mentor.
Reformists are hoping the local elections would show there is still public support for their policies. They held the presidency and dominated parliament and local councils in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but hard-liners have dominated in recent years.
More than 233,000 candidates ran for more than 113,000 council seats in cities, towns and villages across the vast nation on Friday.