Ahmadinejad loses support in election

Associated Press

TEHRAN, Iran

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s support in Iran’s parliament crumbled as final results released Saturday showed conservative rivals consolidating their hold on the legislative body in a runoff vote.

Iran has touted a robust turnout for Friday’s vote as a show of support for the country’s religious leadership in its confrontation with the West over the Islamic Republic’s controversial nuclear program.

The result also is a new humiliation for Ahmadinejad, whose political decline started last year with his bold but failed challenge of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei over the choice of intelligence chief.

Though usually in agreement with the conservatives on foreign policy and many other issues, he had tried to change the rules of the political game in Iran, where the president and legislature are subordinate to religious figures like Khamenei.

Ahmadinejad’s opponents already had won an outright majority in the 290-member legislature in the first round of voting in March. Of 65 seats up for grabs in Friday’s runoff election, Ahmadinejad’s opponents won 41, while the president’s supporters got only 13 seats. Independents won 11, according to final results reported Saturday by state media.

There were no claims of irregularities — which touched off the huge protests in 2009 after accusations the results were rigged. But the ruling system vets the candidates in advance which eliminates the harshest critics.

Iran’s major reformist parties, which oppose both Ahmadinejad and the conservatives, mostly did not field candidates.

The president’s supporters had their best showing in the capital Tehran. Ahmadinejad’s conservatives critics won 16 seats while his supporters took nine.

The new parliament will begin its sessions in late May. It has no direct control over key foreign and security policy matters like Iran’s nuclear program, but it can influence those issues and economic policies as well as the run-up to the election of Ahmadinejad’s successor. Ahmadinejad is constitutionally barred from seeking a third-consecutive four-year term.

The results suggest Ahmadinejad will face a more belligerent parliament in the remaining time of his second four-year term in office that ends August 2013. His allies are likely to be ousted from key posts, and his plan to cut economic subsidies challenged.

No final figures were released, but Iran’s media has claimed that the turnout Saturday matched that of the initial round of voting March 2, when 64 percent of voters reportedly cast ballots.

“Mass turnout in runoff parliamentary elections,” declared a front-page headline in the government-run Iran Daily.