‎
Because Iran’s new year holidays began on March 20, 2008 - immediately after the ‎official announcement of the country’s Parliamentary elections held earlier in March - the ‎opportunity for public opinion to judge the protests by the reformers over the way the ‎elections were handled and their outcome was lost. The spokesman for the appointed ‎Guardians Council that supervises and administers the elections confirmed the election ‎results for Tehran, thus ignoring the repeated protests by the reformers, particularly the ‎letters written by former President Mohammad Khatami and former Majlis Speaker ‎Mehdi Karubi.‎

In this manner, after the election of 19 Principalists (Osoolgara) from Tehran to the ‎Majlis, reformers and Principalists will face each other for the remaining 11 seats. Many ‎already feel the outcome is predetermined. ‎

From amongst the 206 election districts, the Guardians Council through four ‎announcements, declared the results of 157 districts during the new year holidays. This ‎came despite the protests that were made by some candidates regarding certain districts in ‎which they questioned the manner in which the elections were held, the monopoly that ‎certain candidates exercised in their campaigning, and the violations in the ballot counts. ‎In towns across Iran candidates protested the elections in Tabriz, Ghazvin, Karaj, Zanjan, ‎Babolsar, Zahedan, Ardebil, Talesh and Anzali.‎

As the Iranian year was coming to its close, Khatami and Karubi expressed their protests ‎in a joint letter to the members of the Guardians Council and referred to the concerns ‎about the results of the elections in Tehran and reiterated the views of the reformers’ ‎elections campaign headquarters that the results that were announced were not ‎proportional to the number of actual votes that were cast in the ballot boxes in the ‎precincts. They called for a recount of all the ballots in Tehran, or at the least a recount of ‎the ballots in randomly selected precincts with a count of the votes of at least 5 ‎candidates from amongst the Principalists and reformers’ camps.‎

This call was initially positively responded by the inspector of the Guardians Council ‎Taghiabadi who said, “a request for a recount is the legal and natural right of any ‎candidate. It is possible to randomly recount the votes and the Council would undertake ‎to do this.” This respond (which in the words of Issa Saharkhiz appeared to confirm that ‎the Council gave credibility to the candidates rather than the leaders of reformers) ‎however was dead after the new year holidays ended.‎

Under those conditions, Mousapour, the head of the Ministry of the Interior’s Public ‎Relations Office discounted the idea of any recounts and said, “It is obvious that the ‎Guardians Council has announced its final count after the passage of the time allotted for ‎protests, and so any protests that may have been filed had been investigated.”‎

And with that once again, protests fell on deaf ears and election results were announced ‎in a manner that had been planned.‎