TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iran will hold run-off elections for 65 parliamentary seats, state media said yesterday, after loyalists to the paramount clerical leader won a dominating majority at the expense of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The widespread defeat of Ahmadinejad’s allies in the 290-seat assembly is expected to reduce the president to a lame duck for the rest of his second and final term, and increase Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s influence in the country’s 2013 presidential election.
Khamenei swiftly endorsed Ahmadinejad’s re-election in 2009, rejecting opposition allegations of widespread fraud that led to eight months of unrest, crushed bloodily by security forces.
But a rift opened between the two leaders after – critics of Ahmadinejad said – the president tried to undermine the leading political role of clergy in the Islamic Republic.
With all ballot boxes counted, Khamenei acolytes were expected to occupy more than three-quarters of the 290 seats in the Majlis (parliament), according to a list published by the interior ministry on Sunday.
But state television said 130 candidates were going to compete in run-offs next month for 65 seats in 33 constituencies.
“In the race for the 30 seats in (the capital) Tehran, five candidates were able to secure seats and 50 candidates will compete for the 25 remaining seats,” Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar was quoted as saying by state television.
Among the five candidates who secured seats in Tehran, Gholam-Ali Haddad Adel, a key ally of Khamenei and father-in-law to his son Mojtaba, was the most popular.
In the absence of pro-reform figures, whose two main leaders are under house arrest, Friday’s vote amounted to a contest between conservative hardliners split into pro-Khamenei and pro-Ahmadinejad camps.
