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Iranian council announces discrepancies in election recount |
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May 8, 2000 TEHRAN, MAY 7 (AP) - Following big wins by reformers in parliamentary runoff elections, a hard-line council said it has found discrepancies in a partial recount of races swept by reformers in the first round of voting, state-run radio reported Sunday.
Unspecified discrepancies have turned up in more than 10 percent of vote boxes from February's races in the capital, Tehran, said a statement from the Guardians Council, which must endorse final election results. Recounts have been completed on about 88 percent of vote boxes in the Tehran races, where moderates swept 29 of the 30 seats in the first round.
"The council does not want to draw any conclusions at this time but to learn the situation of the rest of the boxes in order to discover the truth and act within the requirements of the law," state-run Tehran radio on Sunday quoted a council statement as saying.
The council has already annulled 12 reformist victories outside Tehran. It has said annulments also were possible in the capital.
Allies of Iran's reformist President Mohammad Khatami won 70 percent of the seats decided in the first round of voting for the Majlis, or parliament.
Hard-line dailies on Sunday ignored the reformers' sweeping victory in Friday's run-off elections, in which reformers have won between 47 and 52 of the 66 seats contested, according to pro-democracy groups.
But the results were splashed across the front pages of the seven moderate newspapers that have survived a hard-line crackdown on the press that has closed 16 pro-democracy dailies and journals.
"Reformers emerge victorious again in run-off elections," ran the headline in the Bayan daily, which was allowed to remain open because it has been more muted in its support for the reformers.
An exact tally is difficult because the political inclinations of some independent candidates were not immediately known.
If the run-off results stand, the reformers will easily have enough seats to control the 290-member parliament for the first time since the 1979 Islamic revolution. The reformers would also be able to grant greater social freedoms and weaken hard-liners' grip on key institutions.
Several outgoing hard-line members of parliament were quoted in Bayan as calling the election results a "disgrace." They also expressed fears that the new Majlis would do away with key hard-line institutions, including the Guardians Council, the Special Clerical Court, which has been responsible for jailing reformist clerics, and the state-controlled media.
"I'm worried that the new Majlis will move against official institutions of the Constitution. These are real threats on the eve of the new Majlis," the paper quoted outgoing hard-line legislator Morteza Nabavi as saying.
Reformers, on the other hand, fear that the ongoing hard-line crackdown could be an attempt to provoke riots that would bring troops into the streets and create a state of national emergency, providing the radicals with an excuse to delay the May 27 opening of the Majlis.
A huge movement for change, fueled largely by Iran's predominantly young population, has swept Iran since Khatami's 1997 election. Islamic hard-liners, out of step with the nation's mood, are unpopular but have shown that they won't fold, using their grip on the military, the state media and the judiciary to stall democratic and social reforms.
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