A video grab of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei moments after he cast his ballot in Iran’s Parliamentary and Assembly of Experts elections on Friday
Iran on Monday declared that voter turnout for last Friday’s parliamentary elections was barely 41 percent, in what is seen as a clear snub to the theocratic regime.
“Despite the ill-wishers of the nation, including intelligence services and terrorist groups, trying very hard to undermine security….around 25 million people participated, with a turnout of 41 percent,” Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi told a press conference in Tehran.
That is the lowest turnout since the 1979 Revolution, a distinction held earlier by the country’s 2020 parliamentary elections – conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic –which saw a turnout of 42.57 percent. The 2016 parliamentary elections saw a turnout of above 61 percent in the first round. Mohsen Eslami, spokesman for the country’s Election Authority, said 45 of the 290 seats in parliament will go for a second round of voting, in either April or May. These include 14 of 30 seats in the capital Tehran. All the new members for the 88-seat Assembly of Experts, a body empowered to appoint the Country’s “Supreme Leader,” had been chosen, he added. Conservatives appear to dominate both Parliament and the Assembly.
The vote, the first since the violent protests that broke out in February 2022, is seen as a reflection of the increasing apathy with the ruling regime, particularly among the young.
The brutal government crackdown on those protests, sparked by the death of a young woman arrested for flouting the strict Islamic dress code, an economy hit by Western sanctions over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, and the lack of opportunities and freedom has left most young Iranian voters disillusioned, say western analysts.
The run up to the elections also saw various calls for boycotting the elections by dissidents, including jailed Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi, who said boycotting the vote was a “moral duty.”
The fact that the voters ignored Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s call linking voting with patriotic duty is a clear indication of the declining trust in the regime, they note.
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