TEHRAN - Between 42 and 51 percent of Iran's eligible voters intend to cast ballots in the June presidential election, according to official figures released Sunday.
Voter turnout has emerged as a contentious issue in Iran, with the 26-year-old regime already urging a strong participation on June 17 to show off its public popularity in the face of "foreign plots".
But if the projection holds, the turnout would be a sharp drop from the figure in the last presidential election in 2001, when 63.31 percent of eligible voters turned out.
Quoted in the national press, interior ministry spokesman Jahanbakhsh Khanjani said the latest figures were based on polls carried out by a number of state institutions.
During the controversial parliamentary elections in February 2004, when most reformist candidates were barred from contesting, turnout slumped to 50.57 percent -- the lowest since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
In large cities, notably the capital Tehran, turnout dropped to around 30 percent. The parliament election were easily won by hardliners and conservatives, ending a four-year hold on the legislature by reformist backers of incumbent President Mohammad Khatami.
Khatami is now nearing nearing the end of his second consecutive term, the maximum allowed by the Iranian constitution.
Around 48 million people are eligible for vote for his successor. All prospective candidates can register to stand as of May 10, but it is up to the Guardians Council -- a conservative-held political watchdog -- to come up with the final list of contenders.
In 2001, the Guardians Council whittled down a list of some 900 would-be candidates to just 10.
Although conservatives are now dominating the field, the camp has been hit by divisions over efforts to unite around a single personality.
Iran's main conservative alliance, the Council for Coordinating Forces in the Islamic Revolution (CCFIR), on Friday chose the hardline former state television boss Ali Larijani as its choice to contest the June 17 poll.
But two of his chief rivals, former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati and ex-police chief Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, have refused to pull out.
"I propose to the other candidates that if the agree on a name, they should propose it to the CCFIR," Larijani told a press conference Sunday, adding that he "did not expect" the council's decision to change.
Larijani also predicted that for the first time in the history of the Islamic republic, the election could go into a second round with no single candidate managing to get more than half the votes in the first round.
Also expected to throw his hat into the ring is powerful former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, seen as a pragmatic conservative and potential front-runner.
Larijani signalled that even if Rafsanjani stepped in, he would not pull out: "If the conservatives are united over my candidacy, I feel morally obliged not to let them down," he said.
Another conservative candidate, former Revolutionary Guards chief Mohsen Rezai, was also quoted as saying by IRNA that he will stay in the race if Rafsanjani enters.
04/24/2005 14:25 GMT