Iranians Vote in Parliamentary Election

Voting in Iran's parliamentary election got off to a light start this morning, reflecting a general lack of excitement over the choices on offer.

Polling stations in both the prosperous north of Tehran and the working class south were sparsely attended. Officials predicted a better turnout after Friday prayers, but admitted that the number of early voters seemed lower than other recent elections.

Reformists seeking to broaden social freedoms have been prevented from standing for about half of the 290 seats in the parliament, or Majlis, mostly on the grounds that they did not show sufficient adherence to the principles of the Islamic republic.

At the Hosseinieh Ershad, an large ornate religious hall in northern Tehran, where reformist candidates were allowed to stand, most of the early voters questioned said they were supporting them.

Mohsen Meighrani said he was well aware that the system had made it impossible for reformists to win a majority, but he thought voting was a better option than a boycott.

"I'm choosing here between bad and worse. It's better than nothing. Even though I know if my candidates get in they won't be able to do anything, at least they will be able to complain," Meighrani said.

The system is designed to weaken party identities. In polling stations, the names of candidates are listed along with their fathers' names and nicknames, but no party affiliation is mentioned. In Tehran, voters can pick from up to 30 candidates for each of the city's 30 seats, so voting involves either a considerable amount of research, or the use of small cards produced by the parties with lists of the candidates they back.

Most voters seemed to have brought along lists of their own, based on what they knew about the individuals standing.

The scene in Shohada, or Martyrs' square, in southern Tehran reflected Iran's social divisions. In the north, women wore colored headscarf's and light-colored coats and voted alongside the men, but the women in Shohada all turned out in black chadors and voted in separately. But attendance at the polling station was just as sparse. There were no queues for ballot papers, even though the process of identity checks and issuing ballots was painstakingly slow.

Tens of thousands of men from the working class district around Shohada lost their lives in the eight-year war against Iraq in the 1980s and most of the voters had lost relatives. Zeinab Rahimi lost two uncles. She said she had voted for "the group that thinks about the people and knows the people's pain". She also took the purity of the faith of the candidates into consideration, and had picked candidates mostly from the hard line United Principlist group.

Large numbers of Iranians see no one on the carefully vetted candidates lists who represents their views. Ali Mohamed Shah, who had driven a contingent of security police to the mosque to watch over the voting, said he was having to work two jobs, taxi driver and gas fitter, to earn enough to feed his family.

"The people you see voting here are people employed by the government, and who depend on the government. Ordinary people do not have a good life and they don't vote," Shah said. "I was wounded twice in the war but the government does nothing for me. I have sons who are going to go to university, and I'm worried I can't pay for them.

"Of my family and friends, not 1% are going to vote. All the people on the list are the same. It's all the same regime."

The result will undoubtedly give a majority to conservatives of one kind or another, and it will be scrutinized for signs of disillusionment with the country's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, inside his own camp. But for many Iranians, it is an exercise with little relevance to their daily lives.