Over 600 Candidates To Boycott Iran’s Parliamentary Elections

Iran’s powerful Guardian Council announced on Tuesday that 5,625 out of the nearly 8,200 candidates were qualified to stand for the parliamentary elections.

The council, controlled by conservative Islamic clerics, banned some 2,500 candidates, most of whom are reformists, including 80 sitting parliamentary members, from running for the elections for their alleged lack of respect to Islam and the constitution.

As a result of the boycott, some 5,018 hopefuls were expected to take part in the race for the country’s 290-seat parliament, the Interior Ministry said.

The withdrawal from the elections by the 607 candidates followed the announcement by the country’s largest reformist party, the Islamic Iran Participation Front (IIPF), to boycott the polls after the mass disqualification of reformist candidates.

Meanwhile, there are no significant electoral campaigns in Tehran, the capital city, except pictures of some candidates pasted on the walls of some buildings along main thoroughfares.

Local analysts said Friday’s elections would only draw a rather low turnout of voters as Iranian people were fed up with the disputes between reformists and conservatives during the past several weeks.

"I think the voter turnout would be far lower than 30 percent in the Friday elections," an Iranian intellectual told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

According to the Interior Ministry, some 46 million out of the country’s population of over 60 millions are eligible to vote in the parliamentary elections.