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1979 Iranian Constitutional Assembly election

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1979 Iranian Constitutional Assembly election
← 1967 3–4 August 1979
All 73 seats in the Assembly for the Final Review of the Constitution
Registered20,857,391
Turnout51.71%
  First party Second party Third party
 
Leader Mohammad Beheshti Mehdi Bazargan Mohammad Kazem Shariatmadari
Party Islamic Republican Party Freedom Movement of Iran Muslim People's Republican Party
Leader's seat Tehran Did not stand Did not stand
Seats won 55≈66 3≈8 3≈7
  Fourth party Fifth party Sixth party
 
Leader Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou Massoud Rajavi Habibollah Peyman
Party Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan People's Mujahedin of Iran Movement of Militant Muslims
Leader's seat West Azerbaijan Tehran (defeated) Tehran (defeated)
Seats won 1 0 0
  Seventh party Eighth party Ninth party
 
Leader Farrokh Negahdar Noureddin Kianouri Dariush Forouhar
Party Organization of Iranian People's Fedai Guerrillas Tudeh Party of Iran Nation Party of Iran
Leader's seat Did not stand Tehran (defeated) Did not stand
Seats won 0 0 0

Constitutional Convention elections were held in Iran on 3 and 4 August 1979. The result was a victory for the Islamic Republican Party. There were 10,784,932 votes cast in the elections, marking 51.71% turnout. Of all members elected, 68% were clerics.

The new constitution drawn up by the body was approved by the voters in a referendum in December.

Campaign

During the elections, Islamic Republican Party had the upper hand when many clerical organizations and friday prayer imams endorsed IRP candidates and the National Television gave them extra time. Their campaign literature featured large pictures of Ayatollah Khomeini, who urged the voters to elect candidates with "Islamic qualifications", on the grounds that only such candidates are able to draft a genuine Islamic constitution.

Different leftist groups fielded candidates for the elections, including the Tudeh Party of Iran, the Organization of Iranian People's Fedai Guerrillas, the Organization of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class and the Socialist Workers' Party of Iran. Among the nominees of the latter was the only soldier to run in the elections and two people in Khuzestan Province who campaigned while being jailed.

People's Mujahedin of Iran ran 26 candidates under its banner, including Massoud Rajavi in Tehran, Mousa Khiabani, Ahmad Hanifnejad and two others in Azerbaijan, eleven in central provinces, six in the northern provinces of Caspian and four in Khorasan.

Boycott

Several parties including National Front and National Democratic Front boycotted the elections in protest to the new press law, the result of which was to close many newspapers. They also protested the election method, in which the voters should write names of the candidates on the ballot slips. They regarded it questionable, considering the high rate of illiteracy at the time.

Pan-Iranist Party was also among the boycotting groups.

Conduct

The elections were held nationwide, except for two constituencies in Kurdistan Province, where an insurgency was underway. The voting age was reduced to 16 before the elections to make more citizens eligible to vote.

Results

See also: Results of the 1979 Iranian Constitutional Assembly election

The Islamic Republican Party and its Khomeinist allies won the election, securing an absolute majority of seats. Of all members elected, 58 were candidates supported by the IRP-led Great Islamic Coalition while the Freedom Movement of Iran and the Muslim People's Republican Party had endorsed 7 and 6 respectively (some were included in more than one list). The IRP was successful nationwide except for East Azerbaijan and West Azerbaijan, both MPRP strongholds, as well as Sistan and Baluchestan where Sunni candidates won. Secular candidates were defeated by a wide margin and most of the members elected were not only Islamist, but also were clerics, as stated by Ervand Abrahamian:

The winners included 15 ayatollahs, 40 hojjat al-Islams, and 11 IRP-sponsored intellectuals. The only successful candidates not affiliated with the IRP were: Taleqani, who obtained by far the most votes in Tehran – however, he died soon after the elections; another Tehran cleric close to both Taleqani and the Mojahedin; two provincial clerics sympathetic to Bazargan; three delegates from Azarbayjan sponsored by Shariatmadari's Islamic People’s Republican Party; one member of the Liberation Movement; one spokesman of the Kurdish Democratic Party, who was promptly barred from his seat; and the four representatives of the official religious minorities, the Armenians, Assyrians, Jews and Zoroastrians.

Summary

A summarised results of the parties that won seats at the election is as follows:

Party Seats %
Islamic Republican Party 55 / 73 75.3
Freedom Movement of Iran 6 / 73 8.2
Muslim People's Republican Party 4 / 73 5.5
Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan 1 / 73 1.4
Source: Nohlen et al. (2001)
↓
55 7 6 4 1
IRP Others FMI MPRP KDPI

References

  1. ^ Credentials of Ghassemlou were rejected.
  1. ^ Zabir, Sepehr (2012). Iran Since the Revolution (RLE Iran D). Taylor & Francis. pp. 34–35. ISBN 1136833005.
  2. ^ "The 1979 Assembly of Experts for the Drafting of the Constitution Election", The Iran Social Science Data Portal, Princeton University, archived from the original on 2015-09-24, retrieved 10 August 2015
  3. ^ Nohlen, Dieter; Grotz, Florian; Hartmann, Christof (2001). "Iran". Elections in Asia: A Data Handbook. Vol. I. Oxford University Press. p. 74. ISBN 0-19-924958-X.
  4. ^ Arshin Adib-Moghaddam (2014). A Critical Introduction to Khomeini. Cambridge University Press. p. 112. ISBN 978-1-107-72906-3.
  5. ^ Abrahamian, Ervand (1989), "The Islamic Republic", Radical Islam: the Iranian Mojahedin, Society and culture in the modern Middle East, vol. 3, I.B.Tauris, pp. 54–55, ISBN 9781850430773
  6. Robert Jackson Alexander (1991), "Socialist Workers' Party — HKS", International Trotskyism, 1929-1985: A Documented Analysis of the Movement, Duke University Press, ISBN 082231066X
  7. Ervand Abrahamian (1989), "To The Masses", Radical Islam: the Iranian Mojahedin, Society and culture in the modern Middle East, vol. 3, I.B.Tauris, p. 193, ISBN 9781850430773
  8. Axworthy, Michael (2016), Revolutionary Iran: A History of the Islamic Republic, Oxford University Press, p. 159, ISBN 9780190468965
  9. Menashri, Daṿid (1990), Iran: a decade of war and revolution, Holmes & Meier, p. 86, ISBN 9780841909496
  10. Nikazmerad, Nicholas M. (1980), "A Chronological Survey of the Iranian Revolution", Iranian Studies, 13 (1–4): 327–368, JSTOR 4310346
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