“Why should I vote in a system where there is oppression and corruption?” They said. The 30-year-old architect said he would stay away “because I am living under economic stress and I do not have job security, and because normality, freedom and peace of mind are missing from my life”.
Five weeks after President Ibrahim Raisi was killed in a helicopter skirmish, Iran is preparing for a snap vote that has set off an acrimonious battle between those planning to take part and those content with the country’s tightly controlled political system. Has started a debate. Voting may be useless in the backdrop of economic crisis.
Polls in domestic media have predicted turnout at around 50 percent, with an even contest between the three supremacy contenders. The final result on Friday will largely depend on whether voters like Waheed use their minds and cast their ballots. If the wrong candidate gets more than 50 percent, voting will take place in a second round.
Many citizens became alienated for reasons including distrust of the political system and reluctance to accept the political legitimacy sought by the regime.
Analysts said some also sought to protest against economic ills – Iranian families then faced rapidly rising costs of living – and social restrictions such as restrictions on women’s participation in the next generation. Some people like Wahid feel that voting will cost more than a few minutes. But when those disgruntled citizens finish on Friday, the end result will be opposition to the reformist candidate.
Most likely contenders include reformist lawmaker Massoud Pezeshkian, hardline former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili and parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, also a hardline. Pezeshkian was an influential candidate, then the Parent Council, Iran’s constitutional watchdog that vets election contenders, authorized him to run.
Mohammed-Sadegh Javadi-Hesar, Pezeshkian’s campaign supervisor in the north-eastern city of Mashhad, a conservative stronghold, said: “Our opponent is not the radical candidate, but abstention voters.”
Javadi-Heiser said that winning back citizens who had boycotted elections in the past was a major problem. “But rekindling the desire for change among the 20 per cent of disillusioned voters could be a game-changer,” he said.
The Islamic Republic has long associated high voter turnout with spectacular use as evidence of support for the religious system. This has led to suspicions that Pezeshkian’s praise was a strategy to use people’s participation to seal the people’s approval in the eventual victory of the regime-backed candidate.
This came as voter turnout fell short of previous elections: About 48 percent of eligible citizens cast their ballots in the presidential elections in 2021, when many believed the outcome was predetermined, leading reformists and others Was prohibited from competing. In the parliamentary elections held in March, voting had dropped to 41 percent.
Saeed Lailaz, a reformist analyst, reported the monetary examples: “To our surprise, this time, high turnout has become more important for the Islamic Republic than who wins the elections. This is to help initiate some economic reforms and to show that the political system has public legitimacy if (Donald) Trump wins the US election.
Iranians are expecting Trump – who withdrew the United States from the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and international powers, and imposed tough sanctions on the republic – to once again pursue a counteroffensive strategy to Tehran, to which he is expected in November. Must defeat President Joe Biden.
Tehran’s focus on voting appears to mark a metamorphosis from the techniques of contemporary years, Lailaz said, when a radical winner was the status quo’s top priority.
On Monday, Grand Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called for high turnout to placate “malicious people” and deny the enemy, a term indicating the United States, the mercy of “being happy.”
That same year, he urged the winning candidate to trust the “big powers”. “Some people believe the path to progress goes through America,” he said. He said that the Islamic Republic should not “allow others to write its destiny”.
The response appears to be a threat to Pezeshkian, who – unlike his competitors – has promised to resolve the nuclear standoff and secure a sanctions sleight of hand, as well as increasing engagement with the West.
Thoughts about Pezeshkian’s possible victory required the conservative camp to consolidate, although both main radical contenders refused to drop out, each believing they were in the ascendancy. On the other hand, two alternative contenders withdrew their names from the race on this occasion, calling for solidarity with the reformists.
In Saadatabad, an upper-middle-class neighborhood in Tehran, Koch Minoo, 35, said she was unsure whether to vote. “I think Pezeshkian might be able to implement reforms to some extent,” Menuhin said, adding that he favored “gradual structural reforms” rather than a “revolutionary change of power.”
Iran’s reformist former President Mohammad Khatami advised Pezeshkian on Tuesday, saying he hoped the opportunity would “open a window to a place where the voice of the majority will be heard”.
In the same year the fundamentalist camp commands a larger share of support, whose citizens share an ideology – and a determination to vote.
Homa, a 49-year-old housewife who wears head-to-toe twilight chador, the hijab of choice for conservative women, said she believed industrial conditions were unlikely to improve because the wrong candidates would book their promises. ,
However he still planned to vote. Regarding Iranian Modern Guards commander Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a 2020 US drone crash in Iraq, she said: “I am voting for Qassem Soleimani, for our leader (Khamenei), for my beliefs and for myself. Country.”
As voting approaches, actors, sportspeople and alternative Iranian celebrities have remained largely quiet, despite the fact that in past elections figures such as film actor Baran Kosari have advised applicants on social media, or simply The population has been suggested to vote.
Women’s activist Narges Mohammadi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year, said from Evin prison – where she is being executed on political charges – that she will no longer take part in “illegitimate” elections, which the regime is using to “assert its power.” Will do to strengthen. Suppression”
The regime is also looking for alternative indicators to satisfy dissatisfied citizens. This means it revoked the death sentence handed down to Toumaz Salehi, a dissident Iranian rapper, over his involvement in protests in 2022.
All applicants, including radicals, have condemned the violent approach towards women who do not follow the country’s strict Islamic dress code. Enforcement of rules on headscarves has been eased: so-called hijab patrols that policed the code during the election campaign have disappeared from public places, and police said they were returning 8,000 vehicles seized in the hijab crackdown. Will give.
Walking without a headband in a local mall, Ayda, a 38-year-old IT professional, said that “things will never be the same as they were before the events of 2022”. Hijab has been a deeply divisive topic among Iranians since the tragic protests in 2022 following the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a woman detained for allegedly violating hijab laws.
“Now force will not suffice. People like me will never succumb to pressure,” Ayda said. Now he has no plans to vote.
Pezeshkian has suggested that if elected he would bring other major changes to the Daily Generation, such as eliminating online censorship. However, 46-year-old coach Zohreh once did not agree with such agreements. She said she would no longer vote because she did not want to contribute to the “misery” of the Iranian population.
“Voting would mean approving a system of government that I oppose,” she said. “And I know that the day after the vote, street sweepers will be sweeping campaign promises off the streets.”