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Iran chooses assembly

after bruising campaign

TEHRAN: Iranian voters ended an acrimonious two-stage parliamentary election with both main competing centrist and conservative groups predicting victory.

Results of Friday's hard-fought second round are expected to begin flowing in on Saturday and Sunday with the announcement of voting figures in small constituencies.

Results from the capital Tehran, the largest and most influential constituency that provides a total of 30 seats in the 270-seat assembly, and other big cities are expected to take several days longer.

Conservative Combatant Clergy Association (CCA) members, who control the present assembly, defend the Islamist norms of the 1979 Islamic revolution and have slowed centrist free-market reforms to prevent any erosion of their support among the poor.

Their main rivals, supporters of President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani known as the Servants of Iran's Construction (SIC), have competed with a vision of a developed Iran of greater political and social freedom.

"This election for the first time seems to have offered a real choice for educated Iranians who in the past decided it was not worth turning up," an Iranian analyst said.

"Conservatives have a good chance of winning because they have promised the poor continued subsidies and blame inflation on Rafsanjani's reform policies," he said. Official figures put the annual rate of inflation at 60 percent.

"In contrast, the centrists promised a more progressive Iran and said they wanted a parliament with a diversity of views."

Rafsanjani's brother Mohammad Hashemi, a leading SIC member, told the Iran News daily on Thursday that tough conservative attacks on centrists before the polls were "petty". "We have enough seats in the forthcoming Majlis (parliament)," he predicted.

Parliament speaker Ali Akbar Nateq-Nouri, a leading member of the CCA, said this week that the grouping would keep its majority in the new parliament, the fifth since the revolution.

One newspaper described the campaign as a mud-slinging contest, with banners defaced and mutual outpouring of vitriol.

"Participation was vast and active," said state television, adding millions of men and women had voted in the second round.

Voters had to choose between 246 candidates for the 123 seats that remained undecided after 133 seats were settled in a first round on March 8.

"These two groups share a common basic idea -- reliance on Allah. But what is their plan for ending inflation?," said orthodontist Fariborz Amini.-Reuter