Iran sets date for parliamentary elections

/By AzerNews/

By Sara Rajabova

Iranian Guardian Council has announced the date of the next parliamentary elections in the country.

Nejatollah Ebrahimian, Guardian Council Spokesperson said on February 18 the nationwide elections will take place on February 26, Press TV reported.

Iran’s Interior Ministry, which is charged with organizing the vote, had demanded the country’s watchdog to pick a day between February 26 and March 4 next year, Ebrahimian said.

The elections for choosing members of Iran’s Assembly of Experts, an overarching body which supervises Iran’s leadership, will be held on the same day. This will be the first time the two major bodies are elected simultaneously.

After the Islamic revolution of 1979, Iran has organized more than 30 votes at the national level. People are expected to cast their ballots in the next elections to pick representatives of their constituencies for a four-year term in the parliament. The new 290-seat legislature is scheduled to convene in the second half of 2016.

Members of the Assembly of Experts are elected every eight years. The 86 members of the Assembly of Experts, known as Mujtahids, are directly elected.

The 290-seat Islamic Consultative Assembly has 285 directly elected members and five seats reserved for the Zoroastrians, Jews, Assyrian and Chaldean Christians and Armenians (one for Armenians in the north of Iran and one for Armenians in the south).

Voters must be Iranian citizens aged 18 or over, and not have been declared insane. Candidates must be Iranian citizens between the ages of 26 and 75, be adherents of the Islamic faith, have pledged faithfulness to the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, be literate and have physical wellbeing, they cannot have played a role in the pre-1979 government, be large landowners, drug addicts or have convictions relating to actions against the state or apostasy. Government ministers, members of the Guardian Council and High Judicial Council are banned from running for office, as is the Head of the Administrative Court of Justice, the Head of General Inspection, some civil servants and religious leaders and any member of the armed forces.

The previous parliamentary elections in Iran were held in March 2012.