Iranian authorities are trying to convince voters to go to the polls ahead of parliamentary elections on March 1, but the appeals appear to be falling on deaf ears as the Iranian people grapple with issues such as a struggling economy and growing political distrust.
Furthermore, memories of the violent suppression of the protest movement that followed the killing by the authorities of Mahsa Amini for not wearing her headscarf properly in September 2022 are still fresh.
In these elections, approximately 15,000 candidates are competing for the 290-seat parliamentary elections and 144 are vying for the 88 seats of the Assembly of Experts, which has the power to appoint the Supreme Leader, the highest political authority in Iran.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is 84 years old, so this upcoming Assembly will choose his successor if he dies during the body’s eight-year term.
What do the abstinence advocates say?
Voter turnout is expected to be at record lows as candidates opposed to the current hardline Islamist government are barred from the election process on various pretexts amid a widespread crackdown on dissent.
“No, I will not vote,” a 23-year-old Iranian woman from Tehran told CNN. “These elections are a show and propaganda and, in my opinion, participation means complicity and helps the government’s political propaganda,” she said, asking not to be named for fear of arrest by the authorities.
The propaganda of the regime
For its part, the regime is trying to get citizens to the polls, using Israel’s war on Gaza as an argument. Supreme Leader Khamenei called on Iranians to go to the polls, writing in X that “elections are the main pillar of the Islamic Republic.” He also warned Iranians that the enemy will seek to discourage them from voting, so exercising their right to vote is their responsibility as well as a form of resistance.
“Everyone should know that fulfilling these duties and responsibilities is an act of jihad against the enemy, because he does not want these duties to be fulfilled,” Khamenei was quoted as saying in the Tehran Times.
For his part, Hamidreza Moghadamfar, an official of the Revolutionary Guards, the body that protects Iran’s hardline Islamic regime, said that “the biggest supporters of the slaughter of tens of thousands of women and children in Gaza are the same ones who call the people of Iran not to vote. They are the enemies of our democracy.”
This rhetoric by the authorities is “a desperate attempt to get people to the polls,” Alex Vatanka, founder of the Iran Program at the Middle East Institute in Washington, told CNN, adding that it is “typical” of the Khamenei era.
On the other hand, Foad Izadi, an associate professor at Tehran University’s school of global studies, said it is not difficult to encourage participation by appealing to national unity against the US and Israel, as most Iranians are outraged by the images. of bloodshed they see from the Israel-Hamas war.
What do the polls show?
Still, polls show that while a majority of Iranians oppose Israel’s ongoing offensive on the Gaza Strip, these appeals are unlikely to sway a very large portion of voters who have chosen to abstain.
Since the government has repeatedly used the Gaza war “for its own propaganda”, those who oppose the government but support the Palestinians “prefer to remain silent on the issue” to avoid being seen as supporting the authorities’ agenda, the 23-year-old woman said. on CNN.
It may even be that the polls that have been made public before this year’s elections are few, the results of those that have been made public predicting a record low turnout. In an interview last December with Iran’s state news agency ISNA, Hassan Moslemi Naeini, head of the state-run Academic Center for Education, Culture and Research, said only 27.9 percent of respondents in his latest survey said that “ he will definitely participate in the elections.” At the same time, 36% answered that “there is no way he will participate in the elections”.
#Abstention #act #resistance #Iranian #Islamic #establishment
