Conservatives win majority in Iranian parliament after polls
Sunday, 16 Mar 2008 15:21
The parliamentary elections will be followed by presidential polls in the country next year
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State television is reporting Conservative allies of current Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have won 163 seats out of 190 in Iran's parliament.
Iran official Irna news agency earlier cited the country's interior minister Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi as saying that 71 per cent of the assembly consisted of candidates favouring the president while the remaining seats had been won by opposition candidates.
Mr Pour-Mohammadi added that 22 million people had cast their votes of which 68 percent were female. The minister added that this was the first time that computerised voting methods had been used in the country.
Election processes have been fiercely criticised by parts of the western media as the country's Guardian council, which consists of clerics and wields considerable influence, disqualified many candidates from competing for not being loyal enough to the Islamic Republic's values.
Parliamentary elections come a year before presidential elections in the country. Current president Mr Ahmadinejad has been a fierce critic of the west and Israel and has refused to consider demands to halt his country's nuclear programme.
Three rounds of sanctions have been passed against the country which has declined to end uranium enrichment and insists that its programme is for energy generation purposes alone.