Word: ahmadinejad
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Conservatives loyal to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have emerged as the big winners in an Iranian parliamentary election whose large turnout surprised politicians across the spectrum. The conservative victory is not based simply on the fact that its candidates prevailed, but also on securing a 60% turnout in elections from which all the most prominent reformist candidates were disqualified from running...
...candidates. While they have gained about 40 seats in the provinces, they have so far failed to secure a single seat in the capital. By the time the Tehran votes were counted Monday noon local time, 16 out of 30 seats had gone to candidates of the pro-Ahmadinejad United Principalists' Coalition, with the remainder to be contested in a run-off later in April or May. Theoretically, reformists still could take the remaining seats...
...only the results that are shocking, but also the way they have been announced," said Jalal Khoshchehreh, an editor at the center-reformist newspaper Kargozaran, echoing the sentiment not only among reformists, but also among conservatives in the Wide Coalition of Principalists, who are critical of Ahmadinejad's policies. Both protested the announcement by Interior Minister Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi - before the counting was even complete - that the United Principalists had won 71% of the seats. "The Interior Minister who is supposed to be a neutral body clearly crossed a red line," wrote one reformist commentator...
...When asked about the Western condemnation provoked by some of Ahmadinejad's more controversial statements, 37-year-old Nargess Rezai, a reporter for the party's publication Shoma, responds, "But if you look at the majority of the people in the world, they respect Ahmadinejad for having the courage to express those concerns. He's paved the way for a new dialogue on Israel...
...another program, Ahmadinejad asked rhetorically why the U.N. was doing nothing about the killings of "women and children in Gaza," but wasting its time on sanctions against Iran. Coverage of Ahmadinejad moving openly around Baghdad and being feted by the Iraqi government was contrasted with images of President George W. Bush's secret visits to Iraq to suggest that Iran is eclipsing the U.S. in the region. Voting in the election is proclaimed as an Islamic duty, and as "a fist to the mouth of the enemy...