Iranians have rebuked Iran’s ruling conservatives, an analysis of parliamentary election results shows, with millions of Iranians boycotting the vote and a far-right faction making impressive gains.
Many well-known conservative lawmakers, including current parliament speaker Gen. Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf, a former commander of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, saw their vote numbers plummet in last week’s vote and in many cases were defeated in their re-election bids. -election.
In many cities, including the capital Tehran, so many blank ballots were cast that some politicians joked that several seats in Parliament had to be left vacant to account for the lack of votes.
Perhaps even more impressive was the emergence of several ultra-conservative candidates. In Tehran, among them was a young state television personality, Amir Hossein Sabeti, who had no political experience and denied that the coronavirus pandemic was real. a cleric, Mahmoud Nabavian, who opposed Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers and said the country needed nuclear weapons to counter Israel. and another cleric, Hamid Rasai, who said protesters from the widespread women-led uprising in 2022, as well as one of Iran’s most famous actresses, should be executed.
Iran is a theocracy with a parallel system of government in which elected bodies are overseen by appointed councils. Key state policies in nuclear, military and foreign affairs are decided by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the Supreme National Security Council, while the Revolutionary Guards have extensive influence over the economy and politics.
Parliament’s influence is limited and focuses mainly on social and economic issues. But parliamentary elections remain important as indicators of public sentiment, which in this case has weighed heavily on the ruling clerical and military elite and the system as a whole, analysts say.
“In the bigger picture, we are witnessing a crisis of representation,” Abolfazl Hajizadegan, a prominent sociologist in Tehran, said in an interview, adding that the voter boycott had broadened and affected the frustrations of a different economic and social class. “It seems that all professional politicians and current political groups and parties are losing credibility and reputation.”
Voter turnout is an important indicator of support for the government, although critics accuse officials of artificially inflating the totals. The interior ministry, which is running the election, said 41 percent of voters nationwide had cast ballots and that blank ballots made up just 8 percent. Turnout in Tehran was around 25 percent, the ministry said, while other major cities reported around 30 percent.
By contrast, more than 70 percent of Iran’s 56 million voters voted when President Hassan Rouhani was elected in 2017.
Prominent activists, politicians and dissidents, including Narges Mohammadi, the imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner, had called on Iranians to boycott the vote as a form of protest. Many ordinary Iranians followed suit, saying in interviews and social media posts that they were disillusioned after years of enthusiastically voting in previous elections for candidates who promised change but failed to deliver.
Since Friday’s election, Iran’s already battered currency has weakened further against the dollar, a bleak indicator of inflation and shrinking purchasing power for Iranians already suffering from an economy weighed down by US sanctions and corruption.
Senior Iranian officials appeared unfazed by voter turnout and rejection of established candidates. Mr Khamenei, who had urged people to turn out and vote, said the election represented an “epic” victory over Iran’s enemies.
But others, including some celebrities, openly scoffed at the claim. A former conservative president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has become an outspoken critic of the government, said in a video that the official fiasco over the election made him feel sorry for himself and the country.
“What victory?” asked. “Putting the world aside is not victory, it is the greatest defeat.”
Voter discontent also surfaced in separate elections for the Assembly of Experts, an 88-strong clerical body that will ultimately name a successor to Mr Khamenei after his death. Three prominent clerics with decades of leadership roles in the intelligence, justice and interior ministries were voted in, including Sadek Amoli Larijani, the scion of a powerful political family and chairman of an appointed council that oversees the government’s work.
Many Iranians, including analysts and politicians, expressed skepticism about the government’s calculations of both turnout and blank ballots. They said empty polling stations, widespread apathy and anger, and reports leaked to Iranian media of much higher numbers of blank ballots suggested the government was manipulating the numbers to save face.
Said Shariati, a political analyst and member of a reformist political party, said in an interview from Tehran that the blank ballots also represented a kind of protest vote. If subtracted from the total number of votes, the actual turnout would be about 30 percent nationally, he said.
“I really hope that the message of the nation will be heard and understood, but my experience proves otherwise,” Mr Sariati said.
Iran’s semi-official Mehr news agency reported that 12 percent of the ballots cast in Tehran were white. The leading candidate in Tehran, Mr. Nabavian, the cleric who has called for the development of nuclear weapons, won about half a million votes, according to official results, a figure that represented only a small fraction of the vote in a city of about 10 million.
Some 45 of Parliament’s 290 seats remained undecided this week because front-runners failed to secure 20 percent of the total eligible votes, the threshold needed to be elected. The Home Office said the second round for these seats will be held in April or May.
Elections in Iran have never been free and fair, compared to the standards of democratic countries, because candidates go through a rigorous vetting process controlled by the government. But they had remained competitive and somewhat unpredictable until 2020, when the conservatives moved to consolidate power.
Even more candidates were disqualified in this month’s election. The Reform Front, the umbrella party of the reformist factions, said it had no candidates in the election. The competition was essentially between conservatives. And this affects the composition of the Parliament.
“We are witnessing a radicalization of the Parliament. A smaller minority of extremists will rule the majority of people who are fed up and want complete change,” said Aliakbar Mousavi Khoeini, a former reformist Iranian lawmaker now in exile in the United States.
Former president Mohammad Khatami, the founder of the reformist movement, surprised the public by not voting. In a meeting with members of his political party on Tuesday, Mr Khatami said he too was boycotting the vote because he wanted to stand with the people and did not want to lie.
“We can say based on the official numbers that the majority of Iranians are dissatisfied with the status quo and the current government, and this gives us little hope for the future,” Mr. Khatami said, according to a transcript published in Iranian. news media.
Leyli Nikunazar contributed reporting from Belgium.
