Ideology Moderation 5th Assembly of Experts 55 / 88 (63%) | Release date 12 February 2016 | |
Leader Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani | ||
The People's Experts (Persian: خبرگان مردم) was an electoral list for the Iranian Assembly of Experts election, 2016, led by Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
Contents
Analysis
This is probably the first time in the history of the Islamic Republic of Iran that a "public figure" publishes an electoral list confronting a list published by an "organization"—Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani against the Society of Seminary Teachers of Qom. The list shares 8 out of 16 candidates with the Combatant Clergy Association's list (including Rafsanjani and Ali Movahedi-Kermani) in the most important constituency, Tehran Province. However, Rafsanjani has been removed from the Combatant Clergy Association's list which has three of his harsh critics as the list leaders: Mohammad Yazdi, Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi and Ahmad Jannati. According to some analysis, this sends the signal that Rafsanjani is still linked to the Combatant Clergy Association's "moderate faction", and his People's Experts list is a "disapproval voting" to unfavorable Yazdi, Mesbah and Jannati.
Overlapping lists
Three days after the list was published, another list led by Hassan Rouhani, called the "Friends of Moderation" (Persian: یاران اعتدال) was published for Tehran. The list shared 15 candidates with People's Experts, where Nasrollah Shahabadi replaced for Mohammad-Ali Amin. The list was limited to Tehran and did not endorse candidates nationwide. Another similar list by Pervasive Coalition of Reformists, also known as "The List of Hope" endorsed candidates overlapping with the People's Experts list nationwide.