Iran Election 2021: State Media Warn About Low Voters’ Turnout Amid Infightings

 Written by Shahriar Kia

On Tuesday, the Iranian regime’s Guardian Council eliminated most of the regime’s sham presidential election candidates at the behest of the regime’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Therefore, the state-run media and officials of the rival faction warn about the consequences of the regime’s contraction policy. 

Khamenei’s action once again confirmed the Iranian Resistance’s longtime saying that the elections in the mullahs’ regime are just shows and serve as a façade of the vicious regime. 

Khamenei intends to pull Ebrahim Raisi out of the ballot box and pursue his contraction policy. Thus, he could not tolerate his closest officials, such as Ali Larijani, the former Parliament Speaker. 

Now the regime’s infightings have reached a new level. 

“What happened during the qualification process in the presidential election is anything but ‘election.’ The Supreme Leader’s ‘selection’ does not need my vote,” said Mostafa Tajzadeh, one of the eliminated candidates and the former Deputy Interior Minister on Thursday. 

“People think that whoever becomes the president makes no difference for us. All presidents follow specific orders. Therefore, our participation is meaningless,” said Paravaneh Salahshouri, a former MP. 

“When the feeling of ineffectiveness spread in society, people will refuse to participate in the election. This refusal to participate in the election eventually results in social incidents, which we have been witnessing recently,” Salahshouri warned the regime officials, according to the semi-official ILNA News Agency on Thursday. 

“Due to the widespread disqualification of presidential candidates, everyone knows that this election will be unprofessional, non-competitive, and will have a low voter turnout,” Seminary Teachers Association in Qom said in a statement on Wednesday. 

“The indifference of the people and a large number of experts and observers are very dangerous and are increasing,” said Mullah Mohammad Javad Hojjati Kermani on Thursday. 

“With the massive disqualification of candidates, people’s trust in the ballot box and the system decreases more. They feel they are entangled and should break themselves free. This situation is hazardous for us,” said Ashraf  Broujerdi, a former deputy of the Interior Minister. 

Broujerdi recalled the fate of Sheikh Fazlollah Nouri, a Shi’ite cleric hanged by people following Iran’s constitutional revolution. “If people get us one day, we would have the same fate as Sheikh Fazlollah Nouri,” she said.   

In its editorial on Saturday, the state-run Jomhuri-e Eslami (Islamic Republic) daily underlined the regime’s policy of contraction and acknowledged that the ruling theocracy is entangled in crises and has no solution for them. 

“The current approach shows the tendency towards complete unification of the system. The existing problems, especially the country’s economic crisis, are too large for a single faction or political group to manage,” Jomhuri-e Eslami’s article reads. 

“The country’s problem is not limited to the economic crisis. Cultural, social, and even political crises are no less dangerous than economic crises, if not more serious and dangerous. These crises are not visible because the real economic problem in people’s daily lives has not allowed other crises to appear. Cultural, social, and political elites and experts, especially sociologists, are fully aware of this fact and aware of the dangers of these crises,” Jomhuri-e Eslami adds. 

“The unfavorable conditions of the country today are the product of internal contradictions in governance. If one tries to blame it on one person or one faction, they are deceiving themselves. The continuation of these contradictions, both in domestic and foreign policy, will paralyze the [regime], and all of us will pay the price,” Jomhuri-e Eslami’s article warned regime officials. 

This article was first published by ncr-iran