the country so many independents won seats that they will likely hold the key in the next Majlis.
The younger sister of President Ahmadi-nejad was defeated for a seat in Garmsar, but, on the other hand, the anti-Ahmadi-nejad slate promoted by the president’s most vocal critics, Deputy Ali Motahari, only won two seats.
Nationally, the results show 48 percent of the seats won by the two far right parties, 41 percent won by independents, 8 percent won by reformists, 1 percent by the Motahari anti-Ahmadi-nejad slate, with the remaining two percent going to the religious minorities who do not run on the national slates.
This is, however, only the first part of the election. Only those who got at least 25 percent of the vote in multi-candidate races won outright. All others must go to run-offs. The runoffs are normally held within two weeks, but Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar said they would likely not be held until May this year. He did not explain the long delay.
Of the 290 seats in the Majlis, 225 or 78 percent were filled in this round of the voting. For the other 65 seats, the top two candidates will go into the run-off.
Of those 65 seats, 25 are in Tehran, where only five candidates won outright. Tehran is one constituency. All Tehranis get to vote for 30 candidates.
Traditionally, with so many candidates running, slates become very important in Tehran and other cities. In rural areas, candidates often run as independents and rely on their local fame. This year, even more independents than usual won.
One question is how many are real independents. Some are thought to be reformists who did not wish to fly the flag of reformism in this election. Others are thought to be closet Ahmadi-nejad supporters.
Ahmadi-nejad was understood to be recruiting candidates around the country. But the Council of Guardians, which must approve all candidates, was understood to be trying to root them out.
In the end, Ahmadi-nejad declined to produce any slate, perhaps because so few of his people survived the Council of Guardians’ review. But some of his supporters are suspected of hiding among the many independents.
The two main slates this year turned out to be far right groups that are indistinguishable ideologically. Many Western media sought to be portray them as more than they are. Their differences are more in terms of personalities, not policy.
The United Principleist slate is seen as opposed to Ahmadi-nejad but not as hostile as the band of critics led by Motahari. The rival slate sponsored by ultra-rightist Ayatollah Moham-mad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi says it supports the president, but is vocally hostile to his chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai, and many others who form the core of Ahmadi-nejad’s governing group.
Those two slates also had many overlapping endorsements. Nationally, here is how the 225 elected Friday break down by endorsements, as tabulated by Agence France Presse:
Slate Seats %
United Prin. 43 19%
Mesbah-Yazdi 10 4%
Both of above 54 24%
Independents 92 41%
Motahari 2 1%
Reformists 19 8%
Minority faiths 5 2%
With half of those elected from the right being endorsed by both slates, it is evident that there is no serious ideological divide.
And with only 19 of those elected being reformists, the opposition is unlikely to make much of an impression in the coming Majlis. But it made little impression in the outgoing Majlis where about 45 deputies were firm reformists and another dozen would sometimes join them. The poor reformist showing doesn’t necessarily signal public opinion, however. The Green Movement called for a boycott of the voting and most reformists are believed to have stayed home.
In Tehran, only five candidates broke the 25 percent barrier and won election.
Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, who was endorsed by both rightist factions, led the field with almost double the number of votes going to anyone else. Haddad-Adel was the speaker in the 2004-08 Majlis, but was defeated by Ali Larijani after the 2008 elections. There is much talk now that Haddad-Adel may take back the speaker’s post. (Larijani was easily re-elected in Qom, but has reportedly stepped on many feat in the Majlis.)
Second place went to Ali-Reza Marandi, a professor of pediatrics at Shahid Beheshti University who was health minister for several years in the 1980s and 1990s. He is credited with running a very successful polio vaccination program when he was minister. Before the revolution, he was an associate professor at Wright State University in Ohio.
Third place went to Mohammad-Hassan Abutorabi-Fard, the first deputy speaker of the Majlis, who is a cleric.
Fourth place went to Morteza Agha-Tehrani, who is also a cleric. He is also very close to Mesbah-Yazdi and has been identified in the past as a religious adviser to the president. He is a stern hardliner and strongly anti-foreign even though he studied in Canada and the United States. He is the only one of the top five who was not endorsed by the United Principleists. Agha-Tehrani obtained a green card while he lived in the United States. He said he did so only to facilitate travel.
Fifth place went to Masud Mir-Kazemi who was named oil minister by President Ahmadi-nejad in 2009 and then fired 19 months later. He is not seen as favorable to the president.
The dominance of the two slates can be seen by the fact that of the top 36 candidates at the polls in Tehran all but one was endorsed by one or the other or both of the those rightist slates. The solitary exception was Ali Motahari, who came in ninth.
The best that any independent candidate did was 37th place. That person is Hossain Tala, who was deputy governor general of Tehran province during the post-election protests of 2009-10. He has been sanctioned by the European Union for his role in repressing the demonstrations. He left that post in September 2010 and has headed the National Tobacco Co. since then. His position in the election likely reflects the absence of voters who demonstrated in 2009 and who were among those boycotting the balloting this year..
Two well-known reformists came in below Tala. Ali-Reza Mahjub, who heads the House of Labor, came in 39th and Soheila Jelodarzadeh, one of the leading women reformists in the Majlis previously, came in 42nd. They were the only reformists to make the runoffs—and they were the only two also endorsed by the Motahari slate, which may have been the difference.
Taking all 55 candidates who have won or will be in the runoffs, just five were jointly endorsed by the United Prin-cipleists and the Mesbah-Yazdi group, while 22 were endorsed just by the United Principleists and 14 just by the Mesbah-Yazdi group.
The domination of the two rightist slates is perhaps best demonstrated with these statistics:
• Of 30 United Principleists running, 27 were elected or made the runoffs.
• Of 20 Mesbah-Yazdi candidates, 19 were elected or made the runoffs.
• Of 14 candidates on the Motahari slate, only five made the runoffs
• Of 30 reformist candidates, only two made the runoffs.
