Tehran, Feb. 23 (Reuters): Defeated at polls they said were rigged, Iran’s reformers vented their frustration in a rowdy parliament today by lashing out at hardliners who have blocked them for four years and will soon take their seats.

Outgoing deputies have to step down at the end of May. Then moderate President Mohammad Khatami and his cabinet will be the only reformers still in office, facing a hostile parliament and retaining little of reforms once hailed as the “Tehran Spring”. “I am announcing my protest at the illegal process of un-elected institutions in recent years which reached its peak in the February 20 election,” outgoing woman MP Fatemeh Haqiqatjou told parliament.

Conservatives won an easy victory in Friday’s parliamentary polls after the 12-man hardline Guardian Council barred some 2,500 reformers from standing. Hardliners won all five seats in the former capital Isfahan, once a reformist stronghold. Turnout was the lowest for a parliamentary election since the 1979 Islamic revolution, but still higher than expected at around 50 per cent. Fewer than expected joined a boycott by the leading reformist party.

Many were frustrated with Khatami’s inability to bring change, put the economy in order or stand up to the hardliners. The outgoing reformist parliament, with less chance than ever of getting laws past the Guardian Council, began debating one by one the resignations of some 100 deputies disqualified from the polls. Conservatives ridiculed the debate. “Their aim is not really resigning, this is just propaganda,” Gholamali Haddadadel, who came top of Friday’s poll in Tehran, said.

Angry voters attacked state offices in the southern city of Kohkilouye and damaged vehicles, the official Irna news agency said. Eight people were killed and 30 injured in two other southern towns in similar protests over the weekend.