Veto of moderate candidates eliminates rivalry in Iran's presidential elections

Iran's Guardian Council has eliminated any rivalry worthy of the name in the presidential elections on June 18, according to the list announced Tuesday by the Interior Ministry.

Although he has approved seven candidates, the veto of several moderate figures, especially the former president of the Parliament Ali Lariyaní, leaves the way to the ultra-conservative Ebrahim Raisí.

Several of the other six appear to act as mere comparsas and are expected to withdraw in favor of the favorite before the vote.

Raisí himself has called for a “more competitive” framework.

The only one associated with the reformist camp is the little-known Mohsen Mehr-Alizadeh, who was a candidate in 2005. Of the rest, the former nuclear negotiator Said Yalili, who attended the 2013 presidential elections, and the former general of the Revolutionary Guard Mohsen Rezaeí, who He has tried four times, they are clearly conservative. The other three are politicians unknown on a national scale. "It is a very unbalanced result towards the conservatives," says Luciano Zaccara, a specialist in Iran and professor of Gulf Studies at the University of Qatar.

Few observers have been surprised by the veto of the Council (a body made up of 12 jurists and controlled by the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei) of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or even the current First Vice President, Eshaq Yahangirí. Ahmadinejad ended his term in 2013 against Khamenei and he had already advised him not to run again in 2017. As for Yahangirí, he is one of the last reformers to remain active after the expulsion of that current from the political scene in 2009 .

In fact, the conservative turn of the Islamic regime has made politicians such as Larijani or President Hasan Rohaní perceived as moderate. Hence, at the end of the second term of this (which by law cannot be renewed), those who still believe in the regeneration capacity of the system saw in the former president of Parliament a kind of

Rohani bis,

the last hope of stopping the total domination of the ultras, who already control the legislative and judicial powers.

Formally, the general secretary of the Council of Guardians, Ayatollah Ahmad Yannatí, had warned Larijani for having started campaigning early. In a video published a few days ago, he questioned the legal framework that allows the State to intervene in people's personal affairs. And perhaps to burnish his progressive credentials, he alleged that when he was Minister of Culture he lifted the ban on video players. That these statements by a member of the political elite worry the highest authorities gives an idea of ​​the situation in the country.

But the veto of Lariyaní, or any other candidate who could overshadow Raisí, goes much further. It has to do with the fear of losing control of a country that election after election has opted for the least official candidate of the restricted range of possibilities. Since the election of Mohamed Khatami in 1997, all the new presidents have been, to some extent, a call for reform of the Islamic regime that emerged from the 1979 revolution.

"The attitude of the Council of Guardians (...) empties the elections of meaning and in the end will weaken one of the pillars of the Islamic Republic," Azar Mansurí, spokesman for the Reform Front, has denounced on Telegram.

Even the beneficiary Raisí has ​​implicitly admitted that risk.

In a video that has been posted on his social networks, the hitherto head of the Judiciary and new candidate for president expressed his discomfort.

"Since last night, when I was informed of the result of the selection (...), I have made calls and I am holding consultations to make the electoral scene more competitive and participatory," says the clergyman before a select group of academics and university students.

جسارتا نصف این مهندسی را منصوبین خودتان در شورا طراحی نموده اند ، گرفتید مارو !؟

- 🇮🇷Akbar Ezzati (@akbar_ezzati) May 25, 2021

For Zaccara, who has been studying Iranian electoral processes for years, his concern makes sense.

“In the last elections he obtained 15 million votes compared to 20 million for Rohaní.

You have to go back to the mid-eighties [of the last century] to find a candidate who would win with that number, and then the voters were far fewer.

That means that it would only win if the participation does not exceed 30% ”, he explains in a telephone conversation from Doha.

Participation

The Islamic Republic has always based its legitimacy on a large turnout at the polls. However, the latest internal polls reveal a high tendency to abstain. Some observers have suggested a paradigm shift in which the number of voters no longer matters so much as the outcome. Zaccara expresses his doubts: "Raisí aspires to be the next supreme leader and reaching the presidency with 15 million votes in a country of 83 million inhabitants does not seem like sufficient support."

Those who have not been approved as candidates have several days to present allegations. According to the Iranian press, the Rohani president has asked the supreme leader to intervene. It is not unusual. He has done it on a previous occasion such as in 2005, when he reinstated Mehr-Alizadeh and the main reformist candidate of that time, Mostafá Moin.