{"id":23106,"date":"2018-11-24T21:23:19","date_gmt":"2018-11-24T21:23:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=23106"},"modified":"2018-11-24T21:23:19","modified_gmt":"2018-11-24T21:23:19","slug":"counting-begins-in-bahrain-elections-amid-claims-of-iranian-interference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=23106","title":{"rendered":"Counting begins in Bahrain elections amid claims of Iranian interference"},"content":{"rendered":"<div itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-io-article-url=\"http:\/\/www.arabnews.com\/node\/1410141\/middle-east\" readability=\"62\">\n<p>\nAL-MANAMA: Polling stations closed and counting began\u00a0on Saturday evening in\u00a0Bahrain for 2018 parliamentary elections.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe government confirmed that\u00a0506 candidates were running in the election, including 137 for local city councils and the highest number of female candidates. Bahrain&#8217;s justice minister announced on Saturday that turnout was 67 per cent, higher than\u00a0in 2014, which was at 53 percent, when opposition groups boycotted the elections.<\/p>\n<p>\nAround 365,000 were\u00a0expected to turn up at 54 polling stations, and 23\u00a0out of 40 incumbents in the House of Representatives were seeking re-election this year to parliament.<\/p>\n<p>\nEarlier on Saturday, Bahrain&#8217;s interior ministry had called on Bahrainis to disregard rumours and seek &#8220;trusted sources&#8221; for information.<\/p>\n<p>\n&#8220;Text messages saying your name has been removed and calling on you not to vote are false,&#8221; the ministry said in a Twitter post.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe ministry later accused Iran of sending the messages saying it was &#8220;the source of 40,000 e-messages to disturb the parliamentary and municipal elections.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\nSaudi Arabia regards the neighboring island nation as a critical ally in countering Iranian interference in the Middle East.<\/p>\n<p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AL-MANAMA: Polling stations closed and counting began\u00a0on Saturday evening in\u00a0Bahrain for 2018 parliamentary elections. The government confirmed that\u00a0506 candidates were running in the election, including 137 for local city councils and the highest number of female candidates. Bahrain&#8217;s justice minister announced on Saturday that turnout was 67 per cent, higher than\u00a0in 2014, which was at&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":23107,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23106\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}