Iran reformers score another big win, sweep Tehran
elections
TEHRAN, March 8 (AFP) - Reformist supporters of Iranian President Mohammad
Khatami swept all 15 seats on the Tehran municipal council Monday in another
stunning defeat over the Islamic regime's conservatives.
The victory is a powerful endorsement of the president's reform agenda
on the eve of his historic trip to Italy, the first to a western European
nation by an Iranian head of state since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Pro-Khatami candidates led by former interior minister Abdollah Nuri
captured all 15 council seats in Tehran, the biggest prize in a bitterly
fought campaign that marked the Islamic republic's first-ever municipal
elections.
Nuri led balloting in the capital, according to final results of the
February 26 polls released Monday by the official news agency IRNA, after
reformers scored major victories around the nation where votes had already
been counted.
Women captured three of the Tehran seats, led by journalist Jamileh
Kadivar, whose husband is culture minister and whose brother was arrested
last month in a case that has outraged students, intellectuals and other
backers of reform.
Reform candidates even won two of the six alternate seats, with the
closest conservative finishing more than 25,000 votes behind the lowest
vote-getter among the 15 reformers elected.
Two of the 15 also had the backing of conservatives but Monday's results
confirm a staggering victory for reformers nationwide, who won 124 seats
on the municipal councils in Iran's 28 provincial capitals.
Conservatives earned just 44 seats with another 88 going to independent
candidates, according to tallies in the Iranian press.
Some 60 percent of Iran's eligible voters, nearly 25 million out of
40 million, took part in the balloting according to official figures.
The decisive victory raises expectations that reformers will take control
of the conservative-dominated parliament in next spring's parliamentary
elections.
It will also put Khatami supporters in mayor's offices nationwide and
one of the first tasks facing the new Tehran council will be finding a
successor to Gholamhossein Karbaschi, the former Tehran mayor jailed on
corruption charges last year.
Karbaschi, who is close to Khatami, was sentenced to two years in prison
and is barred from holding public office while his case is under appeal.
The popular mayor has repeatedly claimed he was set up by opponents
and the sweeping victory by reformers indicates popular displeasure with
the conservatives' continuing control over Iran's police and judiciary.
The resounding endorsement of Khatami's reform agenda could not come
at a better time for the president, who begins a high-profile trip to Italy
on Tuesday.
Khatami will meet with Pope John Paul II, Italian President Oscar Luigi
Scalfaro and Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema in a visit certain to give
a further boost to Iran's international credibility.
The trip comes on the heels of a 540 million dollar deal Iran signed
earlier this month with Italian oil firm ENI along with France's Elf Aquitaine,
as Khatami seeks to translate respect abroad into badly needed dollars
at home.
Iran depends on oil revenues for some 80 percent of its hard currency
and has been hard hit by the worldwide slump in crude prices.
The English-language Iran Daily on Sunday highlighted Khatami's trip,
stressing that fixing the nation's flagging economy, currently facing a
budget shortfall of more than five billion dollars, is "essentially
an exercise in public relations."
It said Khatami should seize the moment to demonstrate the country's
"stability and the viability of the political system."
It urged him to work toward negotiating a large international line
of credit, a task that will be made easier with the resounding mandate
of the Iranian people behind him.
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