Join on WhatsApp 
Join on Telegram The Iranian vote, which opened up at 7:30 am local time on June 18, is all but decided with conservative head of the judiciary Ebrahim Raisi widely regarded as the obvious frontrunner.
Raisi is one of four candidates in the running for leadership in the country, however Iran’s hardline rulers are fighting to ensure that the judiciary chief is elected. Many Iranian reformists are calling for a boycott of the vote after attempts to engineer the outcome: the disqualification of several contenders arguably left Raisi as the natural presidential successor.
Ebrahim Raisi’s campaign promises chiefly to fight corruption and solve Iran’s economic problems. However, the irony of such anti-corruption endeavours lies in Raisi’s own involvement in the mass execution of political prisoners in 1988. If elected, Raisi will be the first Iranian president placed under sanctions by the US government before coming to power.
Raisi’s prospects were plainly boosted by the barring of most reformist-backed candidates from standing in the election – the doing of Iran’s unelected Guardian Council. On May 25, the Guardian Council approved only seven of 592 presidential candidates – notably blocking all 40 of the women who put themselves forward from running.
Outgoing president Hassan Rouhani – who served two full terms in power – criticised this move to limit the pool of participation to a select few, most of whom are hard-liners.
It is this political filtering that has led some reformists to dub the election as merely decorative, calling on others to boycott a rigged system. Regardless, Iranian officials are fighting to discourage voter disengagement and uphold the appearance of a country engaging in ‘free and fair’ elections.
Raisi’s main rival is Abdolnaser Hemmati, a centrist and former governor of the Central Bank of Iran. Hemmati will be aiming to prevent Raisi from securing 50% of the vote – there will be a run-off election if no candidate wins more than 50% of the vote in the first round.
Instead of a boycott, some reformists are calling for an endorsement of Hemmati. It still seems that Raisi’s biggest obstacle will be low voter turnout rather than political resistance. Enthusiasm for voting is understandably low in Iran. Mass disenfranchisement comes amidst economic stress heightened both by the pandemic and US sanctions.
November 2019 also saw a violent crackdown on anti-establishment protests, with a death toll of 1,500. The unrest – incited by growing economic hardships – had bloody consequences with many losing faith in the Iranian authorities after weeks of lethal force used on civilians. The Iranian electorate are perhaps disinterested in engaging with an election while still plagued by recent memories of the repression and violence of the regime.
Perhaps disenfranchisement is also encouraged by the limited powers of the presidency when compared to those of the supreme leader and the judiciary. While one branch of Iranian government is elected by the people, the other – more powerful – branch of government is appointed and controlled by a council of clerics.
A call for voter participation in the election is being propagated by all parties. Despite the almost certain success of Raisi by the end of the vote count, hardliners are looking for a high turnout to legitimize their conservative candidate’s win. Regardless of efforts to increase participation, the state-run Iranian Student Polling Agency predicts that turnout will be as low as 40 percent.
It seems that the Iranian citizens who are opposed to Raisi’s election stand between a rock and a hard place when making the decision of whether to vote or boycott. Former Tehran correspondent for The New York Times, Nazila Fathi, says that “sadly, a boycott this time may cement the hard-liners’ grip on power for many years to come.”
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was the first of an eligible 60 million Iranians to cast a vote in Tehran, the country’s capital. Regardless of the outcome as the polls close at midnight, June 18 was a day of reckoning for Iranian democracy.
