Record 12,000 candidates register for Iran's parliamentary election

PanARMENIAN.Net - Almost 12,000 candidates have registered for Iran's February parliamentary election, state television said on Saturday, December 26, breaking participation records at a time of political uncertainty in the Islamic Republic, Reuters reports.

President Hassan Rouhani, a centrist who won election by a landslide in 2013 and championed Iran's July nuclear deal with world powers, is hoping his supporters can take control of the 290-seat assembly and end years of dominance by conservative factions.

A supportive legislature could give Rouhani a stronger mandate to push through domestic reforms to increase social and political liberties -- an area where his efforts have so far been checked by the judiciary and security forces.

But hardliners have warned of potential "sedition" at the polls, a word used to describe reformist protests following disputed presidential elections in 2009 that touched off a wave of repression and arrests.

Rouhani and his powerful ally, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, are hoping to win a majority by cashing in on the popularity they gained from the deal to restrain Iran's nuclear program in exchange for a lifting of sanctions crippling the economy.

Several former ministers from the cabinets of two ex-presidents, the reformist Mohammad Khatami and the conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, are among the candidates.

The Guardian Council, an unelected judicial body that vets candidates on technical and ideological grounds, is likely to disqualify several thousand of them before voters go to the polls on February 26.