ANKARA: Iranians voted in a second round of parliamentary elections on Friday, with allies of reformist President Hassan Rouhani seeking to wrest more seats from hard-liners.
Rouhani’s moderate and centrist allies made big gains in elections on Feb. 26 for parliament and a clerical body that will elect the next Supreme Leader, but they failed to win a majority of the 290-member assembly.
Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli, speaking on Iranian state television, said people would vote on 68 undecided seats in constituencies where candidates failed to get 25 percent of votes cast in the first round.
Results would be announced by Sunday, he said. “We are trying to announce the final result as soon as possible. Even maybe on Saturday or Sunday,” he said.
The current Parliament is dominated by hard-line allies of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But moderates won all 30 seats representing Tehran in the first round of elections.
Reformist former President Mohammad Khatami last Sunday called for a high turnout in the second round of elections to “repeat the epic,” a reference to moderates’ big gains in February.
Iranian media are banned from publishing the name or images of Khatami, president from 1997 to 2005. But he managed to publish a five-minute video on social media before the February vote that helped to change the balance in favor of moderates.
Iran moderates eye more gains in run-off vote
Iran moderates eye more gains in run-off vote
