TEHRAN: Iran on Sunday reported its lowest turnout in a general election since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, after a poll in which half of the candidates were barred.

The final results of the vote were due to be released two days after it was held on the heels of the confirmation of novel coronavirus cases in the country.

Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli announced the participation rate was 42.6 per cent — the lowest in four decades.

“We held these elections when there were various incidents in the country: we had bad weather, there was this coronavirus disease, there was the plane crash,” he said, referring to the January 3 downing of a Ukrainian airliner which killed 176 people.

He said that in such a scenario “the turnout rate seems perfectly acceptable for us.”

A low participation had been widely forecast, as a conservative-dominated electoral watchdog disqualified about half of the 16,000-odd candidates, mostly moderates and reformists.

Conservatives took an early lead in the vote count on Saturday, according to an unofficial tally, in a blow to moderate President Hassan Rouhani.

They won 191 of the parliament’s 290 seats, according to Fars news agency.

Reformists were a distant second at 16, it said, adding independents had won 34 seats.

Voter apathy marked the polls, but Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Sunday lauded the people’s “huge participation” despite what he termed “negative propaganda” by foreign media.

It “began a few months ago and grew larger approa­ching the election and in the past two days, under the pretext of this illness,” he said, according to a televised extract of his speech.

“Their media did not miss the slightest opportunity to discourage people from voting. (Our enemies) are even opposed to any election by the Iranian people,” the leader was quoted as saying on his official website.

Published in Dawn, February 24th, 2020