Turnout in Iran's parliamentary elections, seen as a test of the legitimacy of the ruling political-religious elite, appears to have reached an all-time low, at around 40%, according to unofficial information published on Saturday, March 2, in Iranian media.
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The elections to the Parliament and the Assembly of Experts in Iran, according to preliminary data from state media, had a turnout of around 40%.
This Saturday, March 2, the counting of the votes began and the Ministry of the Interior is expected to announce the official participation throughout the day. If this figure is officially confirmed, it would be the lowest participation since the Islamic revolution of 1979.
This moment is reached after opponents of the theocratic regime called for a boycott of last Friday's elections, since only candidates from the conservative ranks selected by the Council of Guardians of the Revolution, the Iranian electoral authority, are participating.
The reformists, marginalized since they challenged the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009, denounced that the elections are “neither free nor fair,” but did not call for a boycott.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accused Iran's “enemies” – a term he often uses to refer to the United States and Israel – of trying to make Iranian voters desperate.
However, for the president of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi, the attendance of Iranians at the polls in yesterday's parliamentary elections was “a blow to the country's stubborn opponents.” He said this in a statement:
This presence, full of passion and understanding, was another blow to Iran's stubborn opponents after the historic blow they took in last year's unrest.
The important figures of the day
More than 61 million people were called to the polls and there were 60,000 polling stations open throughout the country yesterday, for 16 hours, after extending voting hours until midnight three times.
So far the results are known in 38 of the 290 constituencies in the cities of Abadan (south), Qom (north), Sirjan (south) or Kashan (north).
The competition takes place between 15,200 candidates – 1,713 of them women – who seek to fill the 290 seats in Parliament.
At the same time, 144 clerics are running for the 88 seats in the Assembly of Experts, the body that elects the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic if it is vacant.
This body is elected every eight years, and taking into account that the supreme leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, is 84 years old, this time he could play a determining role.
The regime's hardline president, Ebrahim Raisi, was re-elected to the Assembly of Experts with 82.5% of the votes, the Interior Ministry announced on Saturday.
How is the country?
Participation in parliamentary elections has been declining, the trend shows, in 2020 it fell to 42.5%, compared to 62% in 2016.
They are the first elections in the country since the protests unleashed by the death of Mahsa Amini, in 2022-2023, after being arrested for not wearing the Islamic veil properly, which at the time caused strong protests demanding an end. of the Islamic Republic. However, these disappeared after a police repression that caused hundreds of deaths.
Also part of Iran's current panorama is the difficult economic situation and the disqualification of reformist candidates by the Guardian Council, which vetoes the laws that are approved in parliament and political candidates.
With EFE and Reuters
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