A reformist politician says pro-reform lawmakers in the new parliament have plans to grab the remaining top seats.
Mohammad Neyshabouri, a board member of the pro-reform Islamic Labor Party, made the statement in a talk with ISNA on Tuesday.
He said the major gains of reformists in the recent parliamentary polls and the high number of reformist legislators in the new Majlis, in comparison with the last three parliaments, has raised their hopes for taking top positions.
Elections for the 290-member chamber were held in February and March. The results of the two rounds showed that the List of Hope, an alliance of reformists and government backers, could gain a simple majority and deprived the principlist camp from maintaining its 12-year dominance in the assembly.
A determining factor behind the principlist failure was the capital Tehran, where they suffered the heaviest blow by the List of Hope that swept all 30 seats.
The Majlis was inaugurated on May 28 and the election for the presiding board was held three days later.
In the vote for the post of speaker, principlist Ali Larijani won a literally uncontested competition and was reelected as chairman, extending his eight-year consecutive speakership in the two preceding houses for another year.
Reformist Mohammad Reza Aref, the top vote-getter in the capital, refused to run for the seat of speaker after he was defeated by Larijani in the vote for the interim presiding board on May 29.
In separate elections for other seats of the 12-member board, reformist Massoud Pezeshkian and the pro-government Ali Motahhari were elected as first and second deputy speakers respectively.
Six principlists and three reformists were also elected to take the six seats of secretaries and three seats of observers on the board.
***Eye on Commissions
Neyshabouri pointed to the post of chairpersons of the 13 Majlis commissions and the head of the Majlis Research Center as some of the senior posts that reformists want.
Larijani said at Tuesday’s open session that the composition of the commissions, each of which has 19 to 23 members, will be finalized “in two days”.
After the members are selected, internal elections will be held in each commission to pick the presiding board, including the chairperson.
He hoped that “the good performance” of reformists in the key parliamentary positions would pave the way to victory in the next presidential and city council elections slated for mid-2017.
In recent weeks, the two groups of winners, the reformist-government supportive alliance and the principlists, have been working hard to convince the 80 independent lawmakers to join their respective parliamentary factions.
