Following the end of the Presidential and City council elections in Iran, almost all Iranian officials congratulated each other. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei described the event as an exciting epic.
“I know it is necessary to appreciate the ‘respectable’ Guardian Council, the Interior Ministry, security and health apparatuses, hardworking ‘national’ media, respected candidates, and all those who have contributed to this great test in some way,” said Khamenei in his message.
Furthermore, before the end of counting the ‘votes,’ ‘reformist’ candidate Abdolnasser Hemmati congratulated Judiciary Chief Ebrahim Raisi on winning the presidency.
Tehran-backed propaganda apparatus inside Iran and abroad was already attempting to tout Hemmati as a strong contender against Khamenei’s desired candidate Raisi to drag the people on polls. However, he became the first congratulator to Raisi.
He was followed by other principlist candidates Mohsen Rezaei, the former chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and Sayyid Amir-Hossein Qazizadeh Hashemi, the Parliament Speaker. Raisi’s rival in the 2017 Presidential election ‘moderate’ President Hassan Rouhani also went to the Judiciary polling station, met Raisi, and congratulated him on his victory.
“Since today, we are completely ready. All of me, ministers, and deputies are in his service each second and hour that was necessary to pass the transition period very well, and the President-elect establish his cabinet in the scheduled time,” Entekhab website quoted Rouhani as saying during his visit to Raisi’s bureau.
Over Half of Voters Avoid Voting
Iranian officials vehemently congratulate this ‘rare’ victory while most of the Iranian voters avoided voting in accordance with manipulated stats provided by the Interior Ministry.
“It is necessary to inform you that out of all 59,310,307 eligible voters, 28,933,004 people cast their votes, meaning a 48.8-percent participation,” announced Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani-Fazli in a press conference on June 19.
“Hereby, Mr. Sayyid Ebrahim Raisol-Sadati (Raisi) became the winner with 17,926,345 votes, and he is ‘elected’ as the depository of administrative apparatus and President… Mr. Mohsen Rezaei Mir-Qaed gained 3,412,712 votes… Mr. Abdolnasser Hemmati gained 2,427,201 votes, and Mr. Sayyid Amir-Hossein Qazizadeh Hashemi gained 992,918 votes… Other votes are considered spoilt votes, which are around 3,726,870 votes,” the state-run TV Channel Six quoted Rahmani-Fazli as saying.
The Interior Minister spoke about 48.8-percent participation while the opposition and international mainstream media like Associated Press, Reuters, MSNBC, CNN, Anadolu, and Deutsche Welle reported an unprecedented apathy.
“At the end of the clerical regime’s election masquerade, the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK/PMOI) announced that less than 10 percent of the eligible voters cast their vote in the sham presidential election. The assessment was based on the reports of more than 1,200 journalists and reporters of INTV from 400 cities in Iran and more than 3,500 video clips from deserted polling stations,” stated the Iranian opposition National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) on June 19.
Furthermore, Faezeh Hashemi Rafsanjani, the daughter of former President and Speaker Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, implicitly approved the MEK’s report. “I checked polling stations in two-three different times… I tried to check polling stations in the east, west, south, and center of Tehran…
Two Considerable Points
Raisi Gains Lower Votes Than Bashar al-Assad
According to statistics declared by the Interior Minister, Raisi gained 30.22 percent of total votes. This is while Bashar al-Assad, Tehran’s close ally, has recently won the Syrian Presidential election with 95.1 percent of votes. No doubt, no one trusts these outcomes obtained through the untransparent process, which the United Nations was prohibited to supervise.
Nevertheless, Raisi’s 30.22-percent victory means only one-third of eligible ‘voters’ have trusted him. This is a flagrant defeat for the Islamic Republic in terms of holding forged elections in comparison to his ally closest ally Bashar al-Assad, the dictator of Damascus.
In other words, regarding the nationwide boycott of the election, Khamenei’s desired candidate failed to win the election significantly and gain maximum votes for his successor. In the past few months, the Supreme Leader had done his best to credit Raisi, who is believably the next Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic.
Indeed, the outcome of the 13th Presidential election in the Islamic Republic revealed that he as a leader has the lowest acceptance among principlists and ‘reformists,’ let alone 51.2 percent of people who boycotted the election, according to fabricated stats.
Untold Stories Behind the Presidential Election in Iran
Furthermore, there are several untold stories behind this bleak election, which intensify ambiguities surround the election—or selection that is generally called by the people. Here, it is worthy to scrutinize two major stories.
First, with a ballpark assessment between the total number of candidates’ earned votes and total casted and spoilt votes, you find a distinction of 446,958 votes. To downplay this flaw in announced figures, Interior Minister Advisor Ruhollah Jome-ei unveiled another truth.
“The distinction between the announced number of votes and the counted votes is due to tariffs received by voters but did not cast in ballot boxes. ‘Regarding the holding of four simultaneous elections, several voters cast their votes in boxes of other elections,” he tweeted.
In this respect, the number of 28,933,004 votes and the 48.8-percent participation belong to four simultaneous elections, not the Presidential election. Indeed, the government scheduled four elections, including Presidential, Islamic Councils of cities and villages, midterm elections for the Parliament, and the Assembly of Experts.
Boycotters Won the Election
Authorities in Iran and their lobby and pressure groups in the West pretend that the Supreme Leader’s faction has won the election. However, the people seemingly spoke louder declaring they are looking for a better future beyond ballot boxes. In this context, the opposition describes the election as a dramatic failure for the Supreme Leader.
“This was the greatest political and social blow to the mullahs’ Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the ruling theocracy,” said NCRI President-elect Maryam Rajavi.
Nonetheless, Khamenei is not the sole loser in this competition. He had already warned about polarizing the election between principlists and ‘reformists.’ Following his remarks on March 21, the ‘respectable’ Guardian Council purged the court from ‘reformist-moderate’ candidates like the former Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani and the current Vice-President Eshaq Jahangiri.
However, not only did they not boycotted the election but also extremely urged the people to participate in polls. Furthermore, ‘moderate’ Rouhani, the ‘reformists’ leader’ and former President Sayyid Mohammad Khatami, and even house-arrested ‘leader of green movement’ and former Speaker Mehdi Karroubi attended polling stations and voted.
Therefore, different factions showed that there is only one genuine struggle inside Iran, and it is between the state and 96 percent of society—according to Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, whose back has been broken due to the officials’ mismanagement and corruption. Those who were lethally suppressed whenever they expressed their demands for essential rights and complained about the country’s horrible situation in any aspect.
In conclusion, the actual winner of the June 18 Presidential election was neither merciless Judiciary Chief Raisi nor his superior Khamenei. It was the people of Iran who clearly declared their hatred of the Islamic Republic in its entirety and their desire for the establishment of a free, democratic, secular, and non-nuclear government in Iran.
Source » iranfocus