TEHRAN – Candidates for Iran’s parliament started campaigning Thursday in the nation’s first election since the bloody crackdown on the 2022 national protests that adopted the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody.
State tv mentioned 15,200 applicants will compete for a four-year time period in the 290-seat chamber that hardliners have managed for twenty years.
That is a report quantity and greater than two times the applicants who contested the 2020 election, when voter turnout was once simply over 42%, the lowest since 1979.
Amini died on Sept. 16, 2022, after her arrest through Iran’s morality police for allegedly violating the nation’s strict headband legislation that compelled girls to hide their hair and full our bodies. The protests temporarily escalated into calls to overthrow Iran’s clerical rulers. In the critical crackdown that adopted, over 500 folks had been killed and just about 20,000 arrested, in line with human rights activists in Iran.
On Wednesday, the Guardian Council election watchdog despatched the names of the 15,200 certified applicants to the inner ministry, which holds the election. Any candidate for elections in Iran will have to be licensed through the Council, a 12-member clerical frame, part of whom are immediately appointed through the splendid chief.
The applicants come with 1,713 girls, which is greater than double the 819 who competed in 2020.
The election will likely be held March 1, and the new parliament will convene in overdue May.
Current parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf will run for election from his place of birth, a constituency in the far flung northeast, after successful a seat in the capital Tehran 4 years in the past. Such a metamorphosis in districts typically signifies shrinking reputation. In contemporary years, his fellow hardline critics every now and then accused him of ignoring the rights of different parliament contributors and pushing aside reviews of corruption whilst he was once Tehran mayor.
Incumbent meeting member President Ebrahim Raisi will search reelection to the meeting in a far flung constituency in South Khorasan province, competing towards a low-profile cleric.
In a simultaneous election, 144 clerics will compete for the all-cleric 88-seat Assembly of Experts that purposes as an advisory frame to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has ultimate say on all state issues. Their time period of provider is 8 years.
Under Iran’s charter, the meeting screens the nation’s splendid chief and chooses his successor. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will likely be 85 in April. He has been splendid chief for 34 years.
Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This subject material will not be printed, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed with out permission.