1992 Iranian legislative election
← 1988 10 April and 8 May 1992 1996 →
All 270 seats of Islamic Consultative Assembly
136 seats needed for a majority
Registered32,465,558[1]
Turnout57.71[1]
  Majority party Minority party
 
Leader Mohammad-Reza Mahdavi Kani Mehdi Karoubi
Party Combatant Clergy Association
and allies
 Association of Combatant Clerics
and allies
Alliance Right Left
Leader's seat Did not stand Tehran, Rey and Shemiranat (defeated)
Seats won 122≈150 40≈79
Speaker before election

Mehdi Karoubi
ACC

Elected Speaker

Ali Akbar Nategh-Nouri
CCA

Parliamentary elections were held in Iran on 10 April 1992, with a second round on 8 May.[2] The elections were the first parliamentary elections held in Iran since the death of Ayatollah Khomeini and during Ali Khamenei's leadership.[3]

It marked a rivalry between the two main organizations at the time, the right-wing Combatant Clergy Association (supporters of President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani) and the left-wing Association of Combatant Clerics. The results marked a victory for the right-wingers who obtained an absolute majority with more than 70 percent of the seats.[3]

Campaign

Main groups contesting in the elections were:[3]

Freedom Movement of Iran, the political group led by Mehdi Bazargan, boycotted the elections on the grounds that their rights to compete in fair elections had been curbed and there was official discrimination toward them.[3]

The duration of official campaigns started one week after Ramadan and were limited to seven days, ending 24 hours before the polling process started.[3] The candidates and campaigners were obliged to focus on their merits, rather than negative campaigning. Several taboos on advertisements were broken during the elections, for the first time foreign academic credentials received positive publicity and some campaign literatures were void of regular political and ideological jargon (such as following Imam's Line or highlighting activities against Shah's regime).[3]

Disqualifications

Some 3,150 candidates registered to run for a seat, but the Guardian Council disqualified about one-third of them, approving only some 2,050.[3] Among the disqualified candidates, 39 were incumbent MPs either belonged to or had sympathized with the Association of Combatant Clerics, including Sadegh Khalkhali, Ateghe Sediqi, Hossein Mousavi Tabrizi, Asadollah Bayat-Zanjani and Ebrahim Asgharzadeh. Behzad Nabavi and Mohammad Khatami, Iran's next president were also disqualified to run.[3]

Results

Baktiari (1996)

The table below only includes seats decided in the first round of voting:

Round 1
Electoral list Seats %
Combatant Clergy Association 81 62.3
Association of Combatant Clerics 20 15.4
Independents 29 22.3
Total 130 48.14
Undecided seats 140 51.85
Source: Baktiari[4]
Nohlen et al. (2001)
Party Seats %
Combatant Clergy Association and allies 150 55.6
Association of Combatant Clerics and allies 0 0
Independents 120 44.4
Total 270 100
Source: Nohlen et al.[2]
Rakel (2008)

According to Eva Rakel, the radical left faction gained 79 out of 270 parliamentary seats.[5]

Alem (2011)
Faction Seats
Right 122
Left 40
Source: Alem[6]
Inter-Parliamentary Union

According to Inter-Parliamentary Union, some three-fourths of the seats were controlled by the Combatant Clergy Association, who secured 134 seats in the first round.[7]

Round 1
Valid votes 18,476,051
Blank or invalid votes 327,107
Total votes 18,803,158
Round 2
Valid votes 7,375,330
Blank or invalid votes 109,767
Total votes 7,485,097
Source: Inter-Parliamentary Union[7]

References

  1. ^ a b "1992 Parliamentary Election", The Iran Social Science Data Portal, Princeton University, archived from the original on 2012-05-30, retrieved 10 August 2015
  2. ^ a b Nohlen, Dieter; Grotz, Florian; Hartmann, Christof (2001). "Iran". Elections in Asia: A Data Handbook. Vol. I. Oxford University Press. pp. 68, 74. ISBN 0-19-924958-X.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h Farzin Sarabi (1994). "The Post-Khomeini Era in Iran: The Elections of the Fourth Islamic Majlis". Middle East Journal. Middle East Institute. 48 (1): 89–107. JSTOR 4328663.(subscription required)
  4. ^ Baktiari, Bahman (1996). Parliamentary Politics in Revolutionary Iran: The Institutionalization of Factional Politics. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. p. 219. ISBN 0-8130-1461-1.
  5. ^ Rakel, Eva (2008), Power, Islam, and Political Elite in Iran: A Study on the Iranian Political Elite from Khomeini to Ahmadinejad, International Comparative Social Studies, Brill Publishers, p. 53, ISBN 9789047425083
  6. ^ Yasmin Alem (2011), Duality by Design: The Iranian Electoral System, Washington, D.C.: International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), p. 75, ISBN 978-1-931459-59-4, The left, however, lost the 1992 Majlis elections to the right after the Guardian Council rejected the credentials of 1,100 candidates, including 40 incumbents... Conservatives won 122 seats in the 1992 elections, while the left suffered a major electoral defeat with only 40 seats.
  7. ^ a b "Parliamentary Chamber: Majles Shoraye Eslami, ELECTIONS HELD IN 1992", Inter-Parliamentary Union, retrieved 20 June 2017
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