TEHRAN – Today nearly 5,000 candidates comprising independents and those campaigning along party lines officially began campaigning all over the country for grabbing 290 parliament seats.

The campaign for parliament began at a time when the country is facing rising inflation in housing and commodity prices, something which candidates will try to woo voters by vowing to introduce plans to stifle inflation if elected to parliament.
Independent fundamentalists announce candidate list for Tehran
In a press conference on Wednesday umbrella coalition of fundamentalists, often called independent fundamentalists, announced their 30-candidate list for the Tehran constituency.
Ali Dorani, the executive secretary of the coalition, said the United Fundamentalist Front and the coalition have nine candidates in common for the Tehran constituency.
Among the candidates are Majlis Speaker Gholam-Ali Hadad-Adel, former health minister Alireza Marandi, current MPs Hossein Mozafar, Mohammad Khoshchehreh, Saeed Aboutaleb, Mohammad Mir-Mohammadi, Reza Talayee-Nik, Adel Azar, Hassan Ghafouri-Fard, Amir-Reza Khadem, Hamid-Reza Katouzian, Ali Riaz, Ali Abaspour, Elham Aminzadeh, and former judiciary spokesman Mir-Mohammad Sadeghi.
Mohammad Khoshchehreh and Saeed Abutaleb were among the sitting MPs who sidestepped the UFF and established the umbrella group of fundamentalists, they were critical of the UFF MPs for obeying the government and weakening monitoring by the government’s performance by parliament.
Khoshchehreh was a strong supporter of the Ahmadinejad administration who later became a critic of the government’s economic policies.
Reformists, conservatives to hold election seminars
The rival reformist coalition and the United Front of Fundamentalist announced that they will hold seminars during the election campaigns.
Hedayat Aqayee of the Servants of the Construction Party told the Mehr News Agency that the reformists will hold seminars on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday next week. He said former president Mohammad Khatami will attend one or two sessions.
Aqayee said the people are free to partake in the seminars. He added the candidates will be introduced in the seminars.
Majlis deputy speaker and the chairman of the UFF election commission Mohammadreza Bahonar also said the UFF will hold one or two seminars during the election campaign in Tehran.
While the umbrella group of fundamentalists released its list on Wednesday Bahonar said he hoped that fundamentalists would not present parallel lists.
“We have asked other fundamentalist groups don’t present other lists in upcoming (parliamentary) elections,” Bahonar told the Mehr News Agency. He claimed the opinion polls suggest that conservatives are far ahead of reformists.
“According to opinion polls the fundamentalists are ahead of reformists; however, we should wait and see that whether fundamentalists would present different lists or not.”
Moderation and Development Party releases candidate lists
Moderation and Development Party released the names of its candidates for Tehran and 22 other provinces. MDP is led by former lawmaker Mohammadreza Nobakht who is also allied to Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
Among the candidates in Tehran on the MDP list are former MPs Mahmoud Do’ayee and Majid Ansari, Mohammadreza Rahchamani, Elyas Hazrati, and sitting MPs Soheila Jelodarzadeh and Alireza Mahjoub (both from the Labor Party), Esmaeil Geramimoqaddam (the spokesman for the National Confidence Party) and former industry and agriculture ministers Es’haq Jahangiri and Abas-Ali Zali, former Gilan province governor Masoud Soltanifar who are all from the reformist camp; sitting MPs from the conservative faction Elham Aminzadeh, Adel Azar, Amir-Reza Khadem and Reza Talyee-Nik and former Judiciary spokesman Hossein Mir-Mohammad Sadeqi.
Reformists will have more candidates in common in provinces
Rasoul Montajabnia, the deputy secretary general of National Confidence Party, told ISNA on Wednesday that the reformists will have more common candidates in other cities than Tehran.
“The National Confidence has made all its efforts to have more common candidates by other reformists.
“And due to this reason we did not announce some of our candidates until Tuesday night and waited to see the candidates of other groups so that the number of common candidates will be high.”
Montajabnia said NCP has 14 candidates in common with the coalition of reformist groups in Tehran