Mark Taliano

A Meaningful Victory for Iranian People/ By Soureh M

After weeks of Persian speaking west-backed channels 24/7 campaign for the election boycott finally on June 18th Iran held its 13th presidential election.

There were different reasons for Iranian people not to participate.

Propaganda against the state on satellite channels like the UK-backed BBC Persian, US-backed VOA, Saudi-backed Iran International, and many others as always and specially for this election trying so hard to draw a wedge between people and the establishment being a big one. Their attempt mostly was run on the base of economical difficulties caused by the maximum pressure campaign and the sanctions which the Ruhani adm had no plans for except the failed JCPOA. In 8 years of his presidency Rial, the Iranian currency, lost it’s value about 1/7. Sanctions and a gun downed currency were felt heavily by the less fortunate and their quality of life dropped drastically. But interestingly those who didn’t vote were mostly among the wealthy and middle class in big cities like 76% in Tehran.

Covid was another important factor that decreased the participation rates maybe to 10 percent as some statics showed.

In this situation and with all the mismanagements of Ruhani adm even in holding the election, the 48.8% turnout was more than anticipated. The last lowest turnout was 50% in 1993 when Mr Hashemi was elected for the second term. The reason was the high inflation up to 50% and dissatisfaction with Mr Hashemi’s performance, which led to 79.9% participation in the next election.

In this election Iranians loudly chose a different path forward by electing Mr. Raesi with 17.9 million votes.

Ebrahim Raesi In his 2 years in office as the Chief Justice of Iran fought strongly against corruption which gave people hope for a better well deserved future. The main stream media calling him “hardliner” is only a reflection upon his leaning towards home rather than the west. If His anti imperialism ideology makes him a “hardliner” let it be, but that’s the quality of a revolutionary in Iranian public. The term hardliner is often used as a colonial term describing the figures and parties who are less cozy to the west and has not an equivalent in Farsi language.

Iran despite the dark manufactured image she gets on media is a very diverse country in terms of ethnicity and even religion. There are more than 13 major different ethnic groups like Azaris, Kurds, Lurs, Baloochis, Arabs, Turkmans, …, and Persians only makes 54 percent.

90 to 95 % of the population is Shia Muslim, 5 to 9.6 Sunni Muslim and less than 1 % is consiste of Armenian Christians, Assyrian, Jews and Zoroastrians. Having their representative in the parliament each group also participate in the presidential election.

Not only at home, the Iranian election was hold in 133 countries. While some like England failed to provide safety for the polls with mobs of Western-backed terrorist supporters MEK and royalist Pahlavi fanatics harassing voters, trying to disrupt the election. Canada failed even to be in this democratic process by not allowing Iran to hold the election in its soil.

Ebrahim Raesi was the favorite candidate for the Axis of Resistance and not only Iranians but many others in different countries are happy with the result. Many world leaders have already congratulated Mr Raesi. Mr Ruhani the current President of Iran visited the President-elect one day after his landslide victory to congratulate and start the transition of power which in some democratic countries like the US hasn’t been the smoothest lately

By Soureh M