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Iran 2016 parliamentary and the Assembly of Experts elections has just started at 8:00 local time (0430 GMT) and are slated to close at 18:00 (1430 GMT) on Friday, but voting hours could be extended if the need arises as the voter turnout for the simultaneous elections amid expectations of a high turnout.
Iranian are gonna vote for 290 seats to go for the next Parliament and 88 seats for the next Assembly of Experts.
Since the next election (presidential) won’t be for another 2 years, the political parties who lose the landmark vote will be condemned to be in the opposition on all levels for a considerable amount of time.
Nearly 55 million of Iran’s estimated 80 million people are eligible to vote, 8,475,077 of them in Teheran province according to Hossein-Ali Amiri, a senior election official at Tehran’s ministry of interior. As many as 120,000 ballot boxes had been distributed in Iran’s 31 provinces and more than 110m ballots issued, the state Irna news agency reported.
As many as 4,844 candidates, including about 500 women, are competing for a place in the Parliament, head of the Interior Ministry's election headquarters Mohammad Hossein Moqimi said on Thursday.
In the capital Tehran, some 1,000 candidates compete for 30 parliamentary seats.In other cities, the number of MPs varies according to the population. Electors must write the full names of candidates they support on the ballot paper. In the capital, this means voters should write the names of 30 candidates on the ballot for parliament and 16 candidates for the Assembly of Experts, though many do not use their full allowance. Five seats also go to the religious minorities recognized in the Iranian Constitution, namely Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians.
Members of Parliament serve four-year terms.
Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani said opinion polls and estimates showed the turnout would be at around 70 percent.
Rahmani Fazli said the vote counting will begin as soon as the polls are closed.
He pointed to special features of the ballots being used in this year’s elections, saying they have been designed in a way to lower the chances of fraud.
Latest polls suggest that both Principlists and Moderates are once again the largest political parties in the race - followed closely by Reformists. And with the elections taking place on several levels, a power struggle resulting in a political standoff is once again on the cards.
It will be interesting to see which political party will have the opportunity to win the majority at the Parliament or form a coalition and influence the Iranian political landscape in the Assembly of Experts.
Reformists have been pulling out all the stops to shake up a decade of conservative dominance over the two political institutions that are up for grabs on Friday. Although many of their candidates have been disqualified, they have put aside inter-party differences and formed a coalition with moderates allied with President Hassan Rouhani in order to block hardliners from entering the two bodies.
The coalition of candidates supported by the reformists and moderates is called “the list of hope” and activists have been busy over the course of the past week urging people to turn out in big numbers and vote for all the members on their favourite list. The first candidate on their main list is the former presidential candidate Mohammad-Reza Aref.
Mohammad-Reza Aref
On the other side, conservatives or “principlists” have formed a coalition led by Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, who has high ambitions to become the next parliamentary speaker.
Iranian Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli (L) and Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri (S-L) along with a number of other officials visit a polling station in Tehran on February 25, 2016, on the eve of the elections. (Photo by IRNA)
Iranian are gonna vote for 290 seats to go for the next Parliament and 88 seats for the next Assembly of Experts.
Since the next election (presidential) won’t be for another 2 years, the political parties who lose the landmark vote will be condemned to be in the opposition on all levels for a considerable amount of time.
Nearly 55 million of Iran’s estimated 80 million people are eligible to vote, 8,475,077 of them in Teheran province according to Hossein-Ali Amiri, a senior election official at Tehran’s ministry of interior. As many as 120,000 ballot boxes had been distributed in Iran’s 31 provinces and more than 110m ballots issued, the state Irna news agency reported.
As many as 4,844 candidates, including about 500 women, are competing for a place in the Parliament, head of the Interior Ministry's election headquarters Mohammad Hossein Moqimi said on Thursday.
In the capital Tehran, some 1,000 candidates compete for 30 parliamentary seats.In other cities, the number of MPs varies according to the population. Electors must write the full names of candidates they support on the ballot paper. In the capital, this means voters should write the names of 30 candidates on the ballot for parliament and 16 candidates for the Assembly of Experts, though many do not use their full allowance. Five seats also go to the religious minorities recognized in the Iranian Constitution, namely Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians.
Members of Parliament serve four-year terms.
Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani said opinion polls and estimates showed the turnout would be at around 70 percent.
Rahmani Fazli said the vote counting will begin as soon as the polls are closed.
He pointed to special features of the ballots being used in this year’s elections, saying they have been designed in a way to lower the chances of fraud.
Latest polls suggest that both Principlists and Moderates are once again the largest political parties in the race - followed closely by Reformists. And with the elections taking place on several levels, a power struggle resulting in a political standoff is once again on the cards.
It will be interesting to see which political party will have the opportunity to win the majority at the Parliament or form a coalition and influence the Iranian political landscape in the Assembly of Experts.
Reformists have been pulling out all the stops to shake up a decade of conservative dominance over the two political institutions that are up for grabs on Friday. Although many of their candidates have been disqualified, they have put aside inter-party differences and formed a coalition with moderates allied with President Hassan Rouhani in order to block hardliners from entering the two bodies.
The coalition of candidates supported by the reformists and moderates is called “the list of hope” and activists have been busy over the course of the past week urging people to turn out in big numbers and vote for all the members on their favourite list. The first candidate on their main list is the former presidential candidate Mohammad-Reza Aref.
Mohammad-Reza Aref
On the other side, conservatives or “principlists” have formed a coalition led by Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, who has high ambitions to become the next parliamentary speaker.
Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel
Iranian Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli (L) and Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri (S-L) along with a number of other officials visit a polling station in Tehran on February 25, 2016, on the eve of the elections. (Photo by IRNA)
