From: mtaghavi@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Amir Taghavi)
Subject: Iran ends vote-counting, moderates leading
Organization: The Ohio State University
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1992 16:18:04 GMT


	ATHENS, Greece (UPI) -- The first round of parliamentary elections in
Iran showed an apparent victory for backers of moderate President Akbar
Hashemi Rafsanjani, according to results reported Thursday.
	Iran's Interior Ministry announced that 135 deputies were declared
elected in last week's polls, but runoff elections were due for half the
seats in the 270-member Majlis or Parliament.
	The official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted the Interior
Ministry as saying the vote-counting after the April 10 general
elections ended early Thursday, and that 135 candidates were declared
elected to the Majlis.
	The front-runners were reported to be supporters of pragmatist
President Rafsanjani, but his hard-line rivals who ``suffered a heavy
defeat'' in the first round ``urged the voters to take a more active
part'' in the runoffs.
	IRNA said the first round of elections showed the pro-Rafsanjani
faction had the largest number of supporters among the 135 deputies
elected, but the news agency gave no breakdown.
	Runoff elections from the remaining 135 seats are due to be held May
8, an IRNA dispatch monitored in Athens said.
	In Tehran, Iran's largest constituency, only two of the nearly 200
candidates who contested the 30 seats in Parliament were declared
elected. The rest failed to win the minimum one-third of the votes cast,
and runoffs were due for the remaining 28 seats.
	Some 2,050 candidates participated in the April 10 elections, but in
the runoffs only the top two contenders for any one seat will be
permitted to run. In Tehran, with 28 seats still vacant, 56 candidates
will compete.
	Political parties have not been permitted in Iran since 1987, when
the late Iranian religious leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini declared
the offices of the then-ruling Islamic Republican Party ``closed''
because of infighting.
	Since then the ruling clerics have split into two main factions with
confusingly similar names.
	The pro-Rafsanjani group who belonged to the ``Society of Militant
Clergy'' (Rohaniyat) in existence since the 1979 revolution, kept the
old name. The hard-liners, who splintered from the old society, took the
name ``Association of Militant Clergymen'' (Rohaniyoun).
	In the elections, the two factions endorsed separate lists of
candidates, and appealed to people to vote for them.
	The hard-line Rohaniyoun faction implicitly acknowledged defeat in a
statement in the Tehran newspaper Salam, published by Hojatoleslam
Mohammed Khoeyniha.
	IRNA quoted the statement as saying the group ``respects the nation's
decision and wishes success for the deputies elected.''
	Prior to the April 10 elections, hard-liners complained that a large
number of their candidates were unfairly eliminated from the contest by
a screening procedure run by the Council of Guardians, which supports
Rafsanjani.
	But even hard-line clerics permitted to run did badly. Khoeyniha, the
clerical mentor of radicals who seized the U.S. Embassy in November
1979, emerged in 34th position in Tehran, in terms of the number of
votes received.
	Former Interior Minister Ali Akbar Mohtashami, who leads the hard-
liners and is considered Rafsanjani's bitterest rival for power, emerged
in 38th position. Hojatoleslam Mehdi Karubi, the hard-line speaker of
the outgoing Parliament, placed 39th.
	However, the man who emerged atop of the list in Tehran, as one of
the two declared elected, was Hojatoleslam Ali Akbar Musavi Husseini, a
mild-mannered apolitical cleric who gained popularity as host in a
television talk show.
	Reports from Tehran said he may have captured a large number of the
women's vote because he constantly told his male audience that Islam
expected husbands to treat their wives with kindness and understanding.


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