Tehran
Iran registered its lowest voter turnout in the country’s parliamentary elections since the Islamic reveloution as the interior minister said on Sunday that 42.6% of eligible voters hit the polling booths.
Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli said the participation rate was “acceptable” for Iran after it experienced bad weather, an air disaster, a coronavirus outbreak and other incidents in the lead-up to Friday’s election.
It was the lowest turnout in a general election since the 1979 revolution that toppled the shah. Experts had predicted a low turnout after poll authorities barred roughly half the 16,000-odd candidates — mostly reformists and moderates — from contesting for a seat.
Conservatives look set for a landslide win in the 290-seat parliament. If the conservatives’ resurgence is confirmed, it will mean President Hassan Rouhani’s slender majority of reformists and moderates elected four years ago is nearly purged.
The moderates have been weakened by the US pullout from a landmark nuclear deal in 2018 and the imposition of fresh sanctions.
Moreover, Iran on Saturday ordered the closure of schools, universities and cultural centres after a coronavirus outbreak that has killed five people in the Islamic republic — the most outside the Far East.
The moves came as Iranian authorities reported one more death among 10 new cases of the virus. Since it emerged in December, the new coronavirus has killed 2,345 people in China, the epicentre of the epidemic, and 17 elsewhere in the world.
The COVID-19 outbreak in Iran first surfaced on Wednesday, when authorities said it claimed the lives of two elderly people in Qom, a Shia holy city south of the capital.
They were the first confirmed deaths from the virus in the Middle East. Iran reported two more deaths on Friday.
“We have 10 new confirmed cases of COVID-19,” Iran’s health ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour told state television on Saturday.
“One of the new cases has unfortunately passed away,” he added, noting that eight of them had been hospitalised in Qom and two in Tehran, without specifying where the death occurred.
The latest cases take to 28 the total number of confirmed infections in Iran. Based on official figures, nearly 18 per cent of those infected with the new coronavirus in Iran have died, compared with little more than three per cent in China. —AFP
