DUBAI: Iranians began voting on Friday to choose a new president from among four candidates loyal to the tightly controlled supreme leader amid growing public discontent following the death of Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash.
Voting opens at 8am (4:30am GMT) and closes at 6pm (6:30pm GMT), but usually extends until midnight.
The election coincides with a period of rising regional tensions due to Israel’s war with Iran’s allies Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon, as well as increasing Western pressure over Iran’s burgeoning nuclear program.
The election is unlikely to bring about any major changes in Iranian policy, but its outcome could have implications for who will succeed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 85, who has been in power since 1989.
Khamenei called for high voter turnout to offset a crisis of legitimacy caused by public discontent over economic hardship and restrictions on political and social freedoms.
“The longevity, strength, dignity and reputation of the Islamic Republic depends on the existence of its people,” Khamenei told state television after the vote. “A high voter turnout is absolutely essential.”
Voter turnout has plummeted over the past four years as young people become frustrated with political and social restrictions.
Final results are expected to be released within two days as ballots are counted manually, but initial figures could come sooner.
If no candidate receives at least 50% of the total votes, including blank votes, plus one, a runoff election will be held between the top two candidates on the first Friday after the election results are announced.
Three of the candidates are hardliners and one is a lower-profile relative moderate who enjoys the support of reformists who have been largely ignored in Iran in recent years.
Critics of Iran’s clerical rule say low and declining voter turnout in recent elections shows the system’s legitimacy is eroding: Just 48% of voters cast ballots in the 2021 general election that brought Raisi to power, and turnout in parliamentary elections three months ago hit a record low of 41%.
With Khamenei retaining full authority over the country’s highest political affairs, the next president is not expected to make any major policy shifts regarding Iran’s nuclear program or its support for militias across the Middle East.
But the president is in charge of the day-to-day running of the government and can influence the direction of Iran’s foreign and domestic policies.
The candidates were endorsed by a hardline watchdog group of six clerics and six jurists aligned with Khamenei, which initially endorsed only six of 80 candidates before two more hardline candidates withdrew.
Prominent among the remaining hardliners are Mohammed Baqer Qalibaf, speaker of parliament and a former commander in the powerful Revolutionary Guards, and Saeed Jalili, a former nuclear negotiator who served in Khamenei’s office for four years.
The only relative moderate, Massoud Pezeshkian, remains loyal to Iran’s theocracy but advocates detente with the West, economic reform, social liberalization and political pluralism.
Trump’s chances of winning depend on rekindling the enthusiasm of reform-minded voters who have been largely absent from the polls over the past four years because previous pragmatic presidents delivered little change, and he could also benefit from his rivals’ failure to consolidate the hard-line vote.
All four candidates have vowed to revive an ailing economy plagued by mismanagement, state corruption and reimposed sanctions since 2018 after the United States abandoned Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with six other world powers.
Iranians have widely used the hashtag “#ElectionCircus on X” in the past few weeks, with some activists at home and abroad calling for a boycott of the election, arguing that a high turnout would legitimize the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Published June 28, 2024 08:02 IST
