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Friday March 29, 2024

Iran to vote in general election many see as ‘lost cause’

By AFP
February 16, 2020

TEHRAN: Iranians vote next week in a crucial parliamentary election that is widely expected to herald the return of conservatives and heap pressure on beleaguered President Hassan Rouhani.

Friday´s vote comes after months of steeply escalating tensions between Iran and its decades-old arch enemy the United States.

The Guardian Council, the body that rigorously vets candidates, disqualified more than half of the 14,444 who sought to stand, including dozens of mostly moderate and reformist incumbents.

A week of campaigning for seats in the Majles kicked off Thursday with little fanfare. Faced with the stark choice of voting for the conservatives and whether or not to vote at all, those who backed Rouhani in the past see this election as a lost cause and are expected to stay away in droves.

"The majority of the current parliament is composed of reformists, and people believe that they haven´t done anything serious" since being elected in 2016, said independent journalist Farshad Ghorbanpour. "The Iranian people have come to the conclusion that their choice has no impact," he told AFP. The purge of candidates was "unprecedented", said Ghorbanpour.

"Even some conservatives who were likely to speak independently and rationally in parliament have been disqualified."

Iranians are feeling the strain after months of turmoil. In November, nationwide demonstrations over petrol price hikes turned violent before being crushed in a deadly crackdown.

Bread and butter issues have put Rouhani´s alliance at risk of losing in a landslide. A salesman in Tehran´s Grand Bazaar summed up the mood, saying he would abstain as voting seemed "useless".

Asked what might convince him to change his mind, Mostafa Hamidi, 37, said it would be if those in power lived up to "at least one of their promises. Just one, not 1,000." Another voter expressed despair over the country´s mismanagement.

"The truth is that whenever we have voted, things never improved but got worse," said Morteza Jaberi, who works in a motorbike repair shop in Tehran´s run-down Molavi neighbourhood.

"Our country is very powerful in all fields, but there are people in charge who cannot use this power properly," the 38-year-old told AFP. Rouhani, a moderate conservative, came to power promising greater social freedoms and the benefits of engagement with the West.