Iran hardliners set for landslide
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Parliament speaker Mehdi Karrubi, a reformist ally of President Khatami, leaves parliament in Tehran Sunday.
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TEHRAN, Iran -- Hardline conservatives opposed to reform are heading for a landslide victory in Iran's controversial parliamentary elections.
Reformists, who boycotted the ballot, said low voter turnout denied the elections legitimacy although those claims were rejected by conservatives.
The conservatives have won 135 of the 290 seats so far with reformers and independents holding a combined total of 65 seats.
In Tehran, the conservatives are firmly in the lead, with CNN's Kasra Naji reported that hardliners would also be declared winners in all 30 seats allocated in the former liberal stronghold.
That puts the conservatives well above the threshold of the 146 seats needed to claim a majority.
The final tally is not expected until at least Monday.
Iran's Interior Ministry said on Sunday that about 50 percent of eligible voters had cast ballots, down from the 67 percent turnout in the 2000 polls.
The turnout figure, announced on the Interior Ministry's Web site, is the lowest inany parliamentary vote since Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi described the turnout as "remarkable", according to a report on the state news agency IRNA.
He said the elections were "another taste of the democratic process".
Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Saturday the winner of the election was the Iranian nation and declared himself satisfied with voter turnout.
He also dismissed U.S. criticism of its elections as a bid by Washington to undermine its democracy.
"The loser of this election is the United States, Zionism and enemies of the Iranian nation," he told state media, The Associated Press reported.
Some polling stations extended their hours to ensure maximum turnout.
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But a reformist who called for a boycott, Ali Shakourirad, called the poll "a big defeat for conservatives."
Liberals had urged a boycott after hardline clerics barred about 2,400 reformist from running for the 290-seat parliament.
In the last parliamentary elections of 2000, walls were plastered with pictures and campaign posters as the vote captivated a country that believed it was cementing a solid agenda of reform. Reformist candidates swept to power.
This time the walls were bare. Observers also said hopes embodied by President Mohammed Khatami's 1997 landslide win failed to materialize and his efforts to free up the country's restrictive political and social agenda were rebuffed by hard-line conservative clergymen, who retained the real power.
Last month, the Guardian Council -- which holds a blanket political veto -- sparked Iran's most serious political crisis since the 1979 Islamic revolution by barring 4,000 reformist parliamentary candidates, including the president's own brother and 80 present members of Parliament.
The reformists accused the hardliners of staging a parliamentary coup, and criticized the country's supreme leader for allowing the elections to go ahead despite the widespread belief that they would be unfair.
Some analysts and intellectuals have started to openly complain that Iran is becoming a religious dictatorship, little different from the monarchy deposed 25 years ago.
Many have openly criticized Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but are also disillusioned with Khatami's failures, calling on him to act on his frequent promises to resign.
But CNN's Chief International Correspondent Christiane Amanpour said it was notable these criticisms are being voiced in public and certain social restrictions, such as on women's clothing, have been relaxed in recent years.
These small but hard-won liberties are now under threat. One group of hard-liners running in Friday's election, the Coalition of Developers of Islamic Iran, said a ban on the use of satellite television, popular in Iran, must be enforced to guard against corruption of Islamic values and national security.
Amanpour added that conservatives, looking to regain full political control, are now reported to be positioning a cleric, Hassan Rowhani, to win presidential elections scheduled for next year.
Rowhani was Iran's pointman for crucial nuclear negotiations with the West last autumn.
The resulting agreement for intrusive inspections was widely hailed, but even that may develop into a new crisis after international inspectors discovered uranium enrichment centrifuge parts that are much more sophisticated than the type Tehran has admitted to having. (Full story)
-- CNN Correspondents Kasra Naji and Matthew Chance contributed to this report
Copyright 2004 CNN. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Associated Press contributed to this report.
