TEHRAN – The Islamic Coalition Party will soon come up with a candidate for the next year’s presidential elections, due May 2017, according to one of the party’s senior figures.

“The final candidate of the Islamic Coalition Party for the presidential elections will be either Mirsalim or me,” Asadollah Badamchian, deputy chairman of the central council of the party, said, ISNA reported on Friday. 

“It won’t take too long for the Coalition Party to pick up one of us,” he added. 

A university professor of Amir Kabir University of Technology, Mostafa Mirsalim was culture minister under Hashemi Rafsanjani. 

Asadollah Badamchian had represented Tehran in the parliament. 

The party is the first principlist group to reveal shortlist for the upcoming presidential elections. 
Under a consensus reached, every principlist party or group should introduce a candidate to the principlist coalition so that one is chosen among them.  

The principlist candidate, once selected, is in for a tough competition with moderate incumbent President Hassan Rouhani who won upwards of 18 million votes in 2013. 

Rouhani has championed an international nuclear deal with the West and vowed to recover economy though economic indexes are not quite promising. 

AK/PA