Parliamentary election campaigning starts in Iran

Feb 23, 2012, 11:42 GMT

Tehran - Campaigning by more than 3,400 candidates vying for Iran's March 2 parliamentary elections began on Thursday, with most analysts expecting a comfortable victory by the ruling conservative faction loyal to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Khamenei, who has the final say on state affairs, is also supported by the country's clergy.

The group's main challenger is the wing close to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which is branded by conservatives and clergy circles as the 'deviant current' for allegedly trying to adopt a nationalistic rather than Islamic approach to government.

The reformists, who are close to former president Mohammad Khatami, are seen as outsiders and are expected to play a minor opposition role in the next four-year legislative period.

The hard core of the reformists are boycotting the elections, with the two main opposition leaders, Mir Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karrubi, currently under house arrest.

The election campaigns focus on internal issues and the economy rather than foreign policy, since strategic issues such as the country's controversial nuclear programme, relations with the United States and its traditional enemy Israel are considered as state-affairs under the remit of Khamenei rather than the president or parliament.

Some 48 million Iranians, out of a total of 76 million, are eligible to vote in over 47,000 polling stations nationwide, according to Interior Ministry figures.

Polls are to open at 8 am local time (0430 GMT).

It is still unclear whether plans to increase the number of seats of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, from the current 290 to 310, will go ahead as planned.

It is also still unclear whether vote counting would this year be computerized or manual.

Should counting be computerized, results could be announced within 48 hours.

Because there is no Western-style party system in Iran, voters are unclear about the political standing of candidates, many of whom are unknown.

The 2009 presidential election, the last time Iranians were called to the polls, was overshadowed by fraud charges and led to widespread street protests.