Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei on Saturday thanked the nation for their active participation in the general election. In a message, the Supreme Leader said that the great nation of Iran exercised massive turnout in the face of heavy magnitude propaganda campaign of the western governments.
Interior Minister Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi said on Saturday that the principalists won 71 seats while other political groups won 29 remaining seats of the 8th Majlis.
Speaking to reporters, he said 60 percent of qualified voters took part in the eighth parliamentary elections and cast their votes.
On the results of Tehran's constituency, he said it will be declared two days before start of new year holidays but the election results in other constituencies will be by Saturday night.
Pour-Mohammadi also praised the significant and powerful role of Iranian mass media which spared no efforts to mobilize the country's public opinion.
Iranian mass media practically managed to foil all propaganda campaigns launched by the enemies of Iran, he said.
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"Aljazeera English is a right little biased channel! Iran is actually a very civil and developed country. So what if they have a different political system to us? when will we learn not to try and impose our politcal and moral ideas on to the rest of the world?! Our politcal and legal system has lots of faults too. If you constantly focus on a country's negative aspects, it will inevitably end up looking like a bad country. Give them a rest for goodness sake!"
Some 22,839,000 eligible voters took part and cast their ballots in the 8th parliamentary elections on March 14, said the minister.
Some 68.48 percent of the voters were female and the remaining 32.51 percent were male, he said.
Western hackers tried to disrupt Iran's parliamentary elections which were for the first time conducted in a computerized way but to no avail, underlined Pour-Mohammadi.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad-Ali Hosseini said here on Sunday that the Iranian nation was the real winner of the Friday parliamentary elections and the US was the real loser.
He told reporters that the US efforts to discourage the Iranian people from going to polls were failed.
The 8th Majlis elections and the by-election for the Experts Assembly were concurrently held on Friday March 14.
Hosseini further praised mass participation of the Iranian people in the elections and congratulated the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, the government and nation on the great victory.
On Iran's peaceful nuclear activities, he said the activities would be continued clearly and transparently on the basis of rules and regulations of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
He reiterated that Iran's nuclear activities are not faced with any "deadend".
On President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's recent visit to Senegal, he said the Iranian president wound up his visit to that African country earlier in order to take part in the nationwide parliamentary election.
Ahmadinejad visited Dakar, capital of Senegal, to attend the 11th Summit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
On Arab League meeting to be held in Damascus, Hosseini said Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki is to attend the meeting.
It was his last weekly press conference in the current Iranian year (to end on March 19).
