Partial results show Iranian president's opponents leading in local elections

Monday, December 18th 2006, 6:04 am

By: News On 6

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) Opponents of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad held an early lead in key races in Iran's local elections, including in the capital Tehran, according to results announced Monday.

Those winning were mostly not reformers but conservatives, although more moderate conservatives than those allied with the extreme hardline president.

The trend, if borne out by final results, could prove an embarrassment for Ahmadinejad, whose anti-Israeli rhetoric and unyielding position on Iran's nuclear program have provoked condemnation in the West and moves toward sanctions at the U.N. Security Council.

Partial results of Friday's polls provided by the Interior Ministry suggested that Ahmadinejad's allies had largely failed to win control of local councils that could prove a bellwether for the country. In the capital, candidates supporting Tehran Mayor Mohammed Bagher Qalibaf, a moderate conservative opposed to the president, had taken the lead.

The partial results also indicated, separately, that reformers might be making a partial comeback, after having been suppressed in the parliamentary elections of 2004 when many of their best candidates were barred from running.

From the results declared on Monday, it looked as if Qalibaf supporters were due to win seven of the 15 seats on the Tehran City Council and that reformists would get another four seats. Three seats would go to the president's allies and another to an independent, according to the early results.

In the elections for the Assembly of Experts, a conservative body of 86 senior clerics that monitors Iran's supreme leader and chooses his successor, opponents of the president also appeared to have done well.

Former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, who lost to Ahmadinejad in the 2005 presidential election runoff, won a Tehran seat on the Assembly of Experts with a high number of votes.

Final results in many cities in outlying parts of Iran also showed that the president's supporters had fared poorly. In Bandar Abbas, a port city in southern Iran, not one of Ahmadinejad's allies won a seat on the council.

Turnout overall was more than 60 percent, substantially higher than that of the 2002 local elections when turnout was about 50 percent, and marginally above that of the presidential elections last year when turnout was 59 percent.

Government officials have not commented on the partial results. They were quick, however, to praise the turnout, saying it would send a strong message to the West that Iran is a democracy.

One political analyst, Mostafa Mirzaeian, said Iran's political lineup was changing in favor of more moderate voices, although he stressed those winning were still within the ruling Islamic establishment.

"Results also show that a new coalition has developed between reformers and moderate conservatives, at the expense of hard-line extremists who support Ahmadinejad,'' he said.

More than 233,000 candidates ran for more than 113,000 council seats in cities, towns and villages across the vast nation on Friday. Local councils elect city mayors and approve community budgets and planning projects.

All municipal council candidates, including some 5,000 women, were vetted by parliamentary committees dominated by hard-liners. The committees disqualified about 10,000 nominees, according to reports in Iranian newspapers.