Purge of Iran Election Candidates
Iran’s Guardian Council announced this week that many candidates for next month’s presidential election have been disqualified, which the Iranian Resistance says shows that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei needs to consolidate power to increase pressure on dissidents and prevent uprisings.
This purge of dozens of candidates further demonstrates that elections in Iran are nothing like the democratic process that they claim to be, which is just one of the reasons that the Iranian Resistance is encouraging the public to boycott the elections.
Maryam Rajavi, the President of the National Council of Resistance of Iran ( NCRI) said: “Disqualifying individuals such as IRGC Brig. Gen. Ali Larijani, the architect of censorship and repression, the speaker of the regime’s parliament for 12 years, and always a part of Khamenei’s inner circle, will render the regime’s power base narrower and more fragile, unprecedentedly aggravate the regime’s infighting, and in turn, accelerate the process of implosion and overthrow of the regime.”
The state-run media outlets have begun to admit that there will be a low voter turnout, mainly because of the hugely successful campaign by the Resistance, but also because of the failures of the regime’s policies on the economy, the coronavirus, and various other issues, which have left the public unenthusiastic about the prospect of voting. This is terrifying regime officials.
The Jahan-e Sanat daily wrote: “[President] Hassan Rouhan i worries about the low voter turnout due to his poor performance during the Covid-19 pandemic. Rouhani and all other officials know what kind of election the 2021 election in terms of turnout is. There is high supply but low demand in this election.”
They acknowledged that the Resistance were responsible for spreading the campaign ahead of the election, something that was echoed by the Arman daily, who said that the message was being spread on opposition TV networks and social media. They said that there were several reasons why the people would not vote.
Arman wrote: “One is that reforms within the system of the Islamic Republic are not feasible and can no longer be carried out within this structure. The other is that the people’s vote has little effect on their lives. So these media try to influence people and say that your vote has little effect on your life and when it does not, why do you want to go to the polls?”
After all, the Iranian people have already roundly rejected the regime in the uprisings of 2018 and 2019 with the slogan of “reformists, hardliner, the game is over”.
Originally published at http://freedomstarblog.wordpress.com on May 28, 2021.
