Iranian Municipal Elections Are Seen As Test For Ahmadinejad

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
Baltimore Sun
December 15, 2006
By Associated Press
TEHRAN, Iran -- Iranians go to the polls today for local council elections that are expected to be a first test of support for hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad since he took office more than a year ago.
Ahmadinejad could face dissatisfaction among conservatives, some of whom feel he has been too caught up in confrontations with the West and has failed to deal with Iran's struggling economy.
Reformists - whose movement was largely crushed by hard-liners after dominating the councils, parliament and the presidency in the late 1990s and early 2000s - are hoping the vote will show popular support on which to rebuild.
All 233,000 candidates, including about 5,000 women, for town and city councils across the country were vetted by parliamentary committees, which are dominated by hard-liners. The committees disqualified about 10,000 nominees, reports said.
In Tehran, candidates plastered streets and squares of the capital with posters and placards and flooded cell phones with election-related text messages.
Voters also will elect the Assembly of Experts, a body of 86 senior clerics that is charged with monitoring Iran's supreme leader and choosing his successor.
But participation in that vote was expected to be low since there is very little difference among the candidates, who are carefully selected by Guardian Council, an election watchdog controlled by hard-liners.
 
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