300 women elected in Iranian municipal polls
TEHRAN, March 8 (AFP) - Female candidates did extremely well in Iran's
first-ever municipal elections with 300 of them elected to city councils
across the country, Interior Minister Abdolvahed Moussavi-Lari said Monday.
"It's a very interesting score, because in many districts, women
account for a not insignificant proportion" of the new councillors,
Moussavi-Lari told a news conference.
Of the 15 seats on the Tehran council, three went to women, all close
to moderate President Mohammad Khatami. They include Jamileh Kadivar,
wife of Culture Minister Ataollah Mohajerani and Fatemeh Jalai-Pour, sister
of the chief editor of the moderate Tous newspaper, which has been banned.
Khatami's sister, Fatemeh Khatami, was also swept to victory in Ardakan
city council in central Iran.
The women's success is all the more striking, since there were only
4,000 female candidates across the country, out of a total of 300,000.
The turnout nation wide was 64.41 percent, although in Tehran only
40 percent of eligible voters went to the polls, according to official
statistics released Monday.
Only the turnout in the May 1997 elections that brought Khatami to
the presidency was higher, at 80 percent.
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